What about basic lack of functionality?

I watch QCad/LibreCAD for the last 12 years.
All of these years I am trying to reject usage of AutoCAD for an open source alternative.
I use only 2d drawings on AutoCAD so, LibreCAD is first open source alternative.

But there is a lack of functionality which is missing and this migration is impossible.

I talk about:

- SNAP on perpendicular and all other modes which AutoCAD has.
- DIRECT the next line segment on specific angles, eg. 90°, 60°, 45°, 30° etc.
- DO NOT FORCE SNAP or DIRECTION, only use snap as magnet for mouse.
- DRAW LINE so fast as AutoCAD. No need for ...... @50,0 for a horizontal line when you can just type 50 (if you point the mouse almost horizontal from previous point).
- Minor: display hints for the next part of command

So, is there any progress on this?

- DO NOT FORCE SNAP or DIRECTION, only use snap as magnet for mouse -
Probably Free Snap gives what you want, have it on always in addition to your other wanted snaps.

Else no progress, coders needed!

chameleon wrote

- SNAP on perpendicular and all other modes which AutoCAD has.

Can you explain how SNAP on perpendicular should work?
Is it possibly what restrict horizontally/vertically does in LibreCAD?
What means all other modes?

chameleon wrote

- DIRECT the next line segment on specific angles, eg. 90°, 60°, 45°, 30° etc.

With SHIFT pressed you can draw lines with a 15° snap, means the line is forced to match the nearest angle which is a multiple of 15°.
This is better seen with Grid snap off
Or use e.g. @50<45 on the command line for a 45° line

chameleon wrote

- DO NOT FORCE SNAP or DIRECTION, only use snap as magnet for mouse.

As dellus already said, Free snap is the solution here.
And maybe the best combination of multiple snap modes, where best combination is various for different use cases or tools.

chameleon wrote

- DRAW LINE so fast as AutoCAD. No need for ...... @50,0 for a horizontal line when you can just type 50

Beside the lack of active coders, this is also a matter of missing clear feature descriptions.
There are statements like 'AutoCAD does it this way' or 'AutoCAD does it better' from time to time.
But they don't contain enough details for a coder to estimate how to implement the feature and the efforts needed for it.
Especially, when the coder never has used AutoCAD, what applies for many if not all contributing to LibreCAD.
About your request, I think I've heard something similar, where the cursor keys are used to define the direction.
Is this the same feature? Can you use mouse or cursor keys for this? What does 'almost' mean, where are the limits?
You see, we need clear instructions to understand how a feature should work. Only than we can check if the underlying implementation allows it at all and how much effort is needed.
The best way for this is a precise feature request at Github issues.
Without a Github account, the second best place is here. Write down more details and request that somebody who has an account create the feature request there.

chameleon wrote

- Minor: display hints for the next part of command

Hints are already displayed, above the command line and in the mouse button widget.

Is it this what you mean? Or what do you expect?

LordOfBikes wrote

Can you explain how SNAP on perpendicular should work?
Is it possibly what restrict horizontally/vertically does in LibreCAD?
What means all other modes?

vertical != Perpendicular != horizontal

li 0,0 100,105
li 20,0 ....... I want to snap perpendicular to first line.

ci 0,0 100
li 200,20 ....... I want to snap perpendicular to circle (or arc or spline)

ci 0,0 100
li 200,20 ....... I want to snap tangential to circle (or arc or spline)

all other OSNAP AutoCAD modes (which are not supported in LibreCAD) are not so frequently used.

With SHIFT pressed you can draw lines with a 15° snap, means the line is forced to match the nearest angle which is a multiple of 15°.

AWESOME!!! But useless.
There is no feature 15° direction snap, if you must type angle.
In that case only the length of line must requested.
50 is a lot faster than @50<45.
Specially if you draw tons of lines.

chameleon wrote

- DO NOT FORCE SNAP or DIRECTION, only use snap as magnet for mouse.

As dellus already said, Free snap is the solution here.

Thanks a lot. This is nice.

chameleon wrote

- DRAW LINE so fast as AutoCAD. No need for ...... @50,0 for a horizontal line when you can just type 50

Beside the lack of active coders, this is also a matter of missing clear feature descriptions.
There are statements like 'AutoCAD does it this way' or 'AutoCAD does it better' from time to time.
But they don't contain enough details for a coder to estimate how to implement the feature and the efforts needed for it.
Especially, when the coder never has used AutoCAD, what applies for many if not all contributing to LibreCAD.
About your request, I think I've heard something similar, where the cursor keys are used to define the direction.
Is this the same feature? Can you use mouse or cursor keys for this? What does 'almost' mean, where are the limits?
You see, we need clear instructions to understand how a feature should work. Only than we can check if the underlying implementation allows it at all and how much effort is needed.

I totally understand that there are no human resources.
I am a C++ programmer, and I have no time at all.

Seriously? A CAD programmer who never use AutoCAD before?
Just draw a line is useless. You must draw it INSTANTLY! Because you must draw THOUSANDS of lines. So "50" is million times better than "@50<45" because "@" and "<" need shift key and they are far one from another and you must left mouse to use 2 hands on keyboard. And of course "45" need an amount of one second of thinking which is too much.

Ok. the behavior is:
When mouse is POINT SNAPPED just a click is ok to complete the line segment. LibreCAD is ok with this.
When mouse is DIRECTION SNAPPED only the length of line segment must requested. BUT also, full coordinates can be given too. So if you give "50" means "@50<45" but also you can give "@50<24". LibreCAD is not ok with this.
POINT SNAPPED means: perpendicular, endpoint, midpoint, center, tangent etc.
DIRECTION SNAPPED means: k*15° where k in [0,24], k in N, from origin_point to mouse_pointer. Direction Snapped if mouse pointer is in an area inside k*15° ± a where a lets say it is a=1°. This is "almost".

chameleon wrote

- Minor: display hints for the next part of command

Hints are already displayed, above the command line and in the mouse button widget.

Yes it is. Probably I found a not well hint in some command. Sorry. Ignore that.

You can find features such as:
- angled line defined by angle and length
- orthogonal line to a defined line. Then you  snap the relevant point.
https://librecad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ref/tools.html#line

A bit of background on what the OP asks for. In AutoCAD, TAN and PER are snap modes. LINE from [here] to [here] to TAN to [this curved entity] to MID of [this] to PER to [this line] and so forth. Importantly, the on-the-fly selected snap takes precedence over existing snap modes. So I might have grid and endpoint snap selected, but if I click "Snap middle" or type MID on the command line it will go to that.

I have the snap modes aliased to their ACAD names so that's how I use them here.

In LibreCAD we can chain some snap modes into a LINE command (like MID or END) but not those; they seem to be separate line commands TANPC, etc. It is a bit of a mental interruption to need to pick the line mode before starting the line, or to have to discontinue one line drawing mode and start another. Also the snap functionality overall takes a little getting used to. AutoCAD has a "Snap radius" which helps you pick the END, MID, CEN or whatever you want or avoid snap altogether by just not being near enough to another feature.

BTW I think the 15 degree thing is not useless. There are plenty of hexagonal and diagonal geometric features that use those angles.

I am unaware of PERP.
I just try it.
Eee hmmm...
What is this?

When I am on POINT1 and I want a perpendicular to LINE1, I must:
- LI, do 5-6 points until POINT1
- Abort active line
- Type PERP
- Select LINE1
- Select POINT1 - A line segment perpendicular to LINE1 appears but does not extend to LINE1 and does not start from POINT1.
- I TRIM new line segment to start from POINT1.
- Then I realize that there is no EXTEND to extend line segment to LINE1. Oh! There is LENGTHEN but does not extend to LINE1. It extends ... with its own way!
:-(

How AutoCAD handle this:
- OSNAP: Enable PERPENDICULAR snap
- L for line, do 5-6 points until POINT1
- Snap perpendicular to LINE1

The TRIM command extends and trims.

I just tried PERP. Yes, it makes a perpendicular line but it does not snap to the line. For me it didn't even let me specify an endpoint; it created a short line segment that was perpendicular to the specified line.

My recollection of how AutoCAD handles this, from the command line:

L from [click] to PER to [click].

I'm a daily AutoCad user so I know the perpendicular snap well.  It causes a line you are drawing to snap to a target line such that the two lines are perpendicular.  I noticed that LibreCad doesn't have such a snap mode but there are work-arounds.

1) Where the target line is horizontal or perpendicular: before snapping the line endpoint to the target line, activate Snap On Entity and either Restrict Horizontal/Vertical then snap to the target line.  

2) Where the target line is sloped:  Use the "perp" command (Orthogonal Line) and then trim to tidy up.

JayCad, Thanks for the solution. LibreCad is practical but for those that are too lazy (infrequent cad user) to read the entire librecad wiki, forums and people like you make using librecad productive and interesting. lordofbikes seems to have a chip on his shoulder. A thousand words and no solution to a simple question.


Simplicity is a sign of genius.

Thank you, I'm glad if I can help.  However, I must say that I do not think LordOfBikes has a chip on his shoulder.  The OP's post was not completely clear and I had to read the thread a couple of times until i understood it, and I'm still not entirely clear on the matter of simply entering a distance instead of a distance+angle combination.

LoB's answer may be terse but he does suggest solutions where he can understand what Chameleon is asking, asks for clarification where he does not and suggests ways that Chameleon can submit feature requests.  LoB's reply is useful when read properly.

I get the impression that Chameleon's first language is not English, which may account for the clarity of the requests.  

To return to the distance/angle question, the impression I get is that the OP wants an angle snap such that when drawing a line, after placing the start point, the cursor is constrained to eg 15 degree increments and only the distance needs to be entered rather than a e.g. @50<45 combination.  

AutoCad can be configured to "cursor input" where a box next to the cursor displays the distance and angle from the previous point and can by changed with keyboard input. Used together with angle snap, one just hovers the mouse near to an angle increment and types the required distance.  

I think that the Angle mode of line drawing is the nearest to this in LibreCad because you can set the line angle and length in the toolbar options.

Chameleon, if you are moving away from AutoCad because of the cost but need a very near functionality match, I suggest trying ProgeCad - I used to use this for building survey and it is very close to AutoCad in functionality, but is a fraction of the cost.   I'm not familiar with QCAD (perhaps someone else here is) but the professional trial download might be worth looking at.

I'm drawing stairs on a house subdivision plan layout. The house is set at a slight angle. I want to be away from the house a few feet and give the start point. Then I want to use snap "perpendicular" to draw the line to the house perpendicular to the side wall. Then I can use offset to complete the rest of the lines.

I had Qcad Pro version long  alongside LibreCAD. I think LiberCAD passed Qcad Pro years ago,

Often here are complaints from former AutoCAD users why this and that does not work.

Reasons are already covered in the thread. Hard part is to unlearn something before you start study new.