Posted by wiesi on Oct 25, 2011; 1:44pm
URL: https://forum.librecad.org/Scaling-issues-tp4936271.html

I'm currently using 1.0.0rc3 on windows7.

I think I've spotted a problem:
I inserted a bitmap into a drawing and scaled it down by a factor of approximately 0.002, so it's very small now. If I click on "print preview", and select "center to page" and "fit to page", the image is shown in the lower left corner and very small. Inserting the unscaled image reveals, that the printing preview behaves like the image wasn't scaled. The scaling factor seems to be ignored.

Ok. Now a question:
I've been looking for an option to set the drawing scale. I fear that there is none, as with QCad, and I think this is a big inconvenience, at least for technical drawings.
Why? (I'll spend those 15 minutes and explain it.) Of course, I could just set the printing scale. The problem is that all the dimensions put in should have a set height on the paper, regardless of the scaling factor of the workpiece. If I want to print a drawing with a scale of 1:4 and the dimensions should be e.g. 4mm high on paper, the dimensions should still be 4mm on paper if I decide to use an 1:1 scale. Additionally the linewidth should be correct (independent of the scaling factor), too. In many cases those things must not depend on the scaling. The choice of dimensioning and linewidth rules are usually given. Either by a norm or an in-house standard of the company you work for or someone else. Of Course, one could correct the dimension settings and line width every time the scale changes, but this is superfluous work and error prone.

Don't get me wrong: I don't want to be rude and I know that LibreCAD is OpenSource and I could implement this myself. I just want to spell the problem out, because this topic occasionally comes up with QCad and everyone just says: "Draw it 1:1 and use the printing scale factor.", without having understood the real problem.