[ArcheOS] librecad test (various OS) - LibreCAD

[Ricardo Gaidão]

I tested LibreCAD and QCad Community Edition, converting raster archaeological plans to vector.

Some problems emerged.

RASTER
QCad is much more slow than LibreCAD, handling raster images. Thumbs up for LibreCAD.



POLYLINES

QCad Community Ed. can't create or edit Polylines (only the commercial version).

LibreCad can create Polylines but apparently can't convert lines to polyline or join different polylines in the same polyline.


SCALE and ALIGN
QCad and LibreCad only support scaling drawings using a manual scaling factor. It's impossible to scale a drawing using a reference entity.

 i.e. specify that a certain polyline or polygon has "exactly" the same dimension that another reference polyline or polygon in the same drawing.

QCad and LibreCad can't also align entities using another entity as reference.

Using manual scaling factor and rotation is time consuming and create (small, but real) 
discrepancies when creating a drawing based in another imported 
drawings.



OFFSET
Still experimental in LibreCad.



CONCLUSION

Archaeological technical drawings are frequently created from many different vectorial or raster sources.


Issues like, perfect scaling and aligning of different drawings or entities conversion, are crucial to achieve a good archaeological CAD.     


As several people already have pointed out in this list, LibreCad is a developing project and QCad Community Edition apparently closed. 

LibreCad project is continuing improving and planning to add new features, like better Polyline or Offset edition, LibreDwg support, etc. 


LibreCad team also had some problems with QCad. The hatches distributed with QCad Community Ed., belongs to QCad and can't be distributed in another projects. That's the reason LibreCad team had to create a new set of hatches for they software.
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