Posted by John Murphy on Aug 04, 2024; 7:33am
URL: https://forum.librecad.org/New-user-from-Australia-tp5725153p5725191.html

Well I have been spending hours each day going through tutorials and reading all the documentation I could find. Last night I created a drawing and added dimensions and then printed it out. Had a few problems along the way which I was able to resolve.
 
I had an issue with dimensions not showing on the drawing only boxes, but I checked to make sure draft mode was off, which it was. Doing a print view showed the dimensions and they printed out. Eventually I got the dimensions to show on the screen, It seems that if Zoom Panning is used and left active the dimensions won't show.

For some reason the printing mode defaults to portrait mode even though I set it to Landscape and had the program to change printer defaults. I set the printer default to be landscape but it still printed out in portrait mode unless I changed from the print options for each printout I did.

Today I decided to add to my drawing that I had done by including a side elevation of the object. All went well until I tried to bevel a corner of a rectangle. Nothing would work even after following the instructions from the user manual. Ater a couple of hours I finally got a bevel, sort off. I had to separate the rectangle into individual lines. The bevel function still did not work but drawing a line between two points did.

I completed my side elevation drawing which I had placed on a separate layer so I could print it out separately to keep the drawing a large as possible.

When attempting to print out the side elevation I encountered another problem which I had not found a solution for.  When I used Print Preview to check that everything as positioned properly, I went to make a change to the drawing before printing and when I exited print preview the drawing had vanished. It seems my drawing had closed and had been replaced with the default blank page.

I had auto save on so it was not too much of a problem. I tested this out a few times and every time my drawing was replaced by the default blank page. Even after I printed the drawing I loose my drawing when I exit print preview.

I have been willing to accept some of the oddities of Librecad, but loosing my drawing and having to reload the last autosaved version each time well, I am afraid that this is a deal breaker for me, as it is quicker for me to do manual drawings instead.

If Librecad had been useful for me I was intending to purchase an A3 laser printer, but I think investing in a new draughting table may be the better option.

Thanks to those who helped me to learn Librecad.