A preview of Inkscape 0.49 [LWN.net]

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Dec 20, 2012 10:18 UTC (Thu) by ms (subscriber, #41272)
Parent article: A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Measure looks interesting, but unless I'm missing something (very possible), I would still consider inkscape unfit for CAD work. The chief problem is that if you try to position an object by coordinates, you're positioning the bounding box, thus outside the lines, rather than down the centre of the lines. This is most frustrating with simple rectangles and squares, where "adjacent" objects end up butting-up to each other rather than sharing the same coordinates for some of their points. Thus really you have to work point-by-point, which then means you have to do all the maths yourself. All that said, I might be mis-using it, or there may be tools I've not spotted.

For simple 2D CAD work, the best I've found is librecad, though it's well worth watching the youtube videos because using it is very different from a vector graphics program like inkscape.

Don't get me wrong though - I really like inkscape and think it's a great tool. But even with all the measurement tools in the world, I wouldn't really consider it for CAD work.

to post comments

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Dec 20, 2012 13:21 UTC (Thu) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link] (7 responses)

It sounds like you're referring to "visual bounding box" versus "geometric bounding box," which is a preference -- geometric does not take the stroke width into account. Is that what you mean? In any case, although I would not want to be accused of steering people toward Inkscape for high-precision machining, there evidently are a lot of people who are using it for things like laser-cutting and vinyl-cutting; I don't know what term one would apply to that to distinguish it from "hard core" drafting -- it can get pretty detailed, depending on the hardware.

Nate

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Dec 20, 2012 15:38 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

That would be an awesome article!

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Jan 8, 2013 21:36 UTC (Tue) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link]

I agree, and it's already been written, by Alexandre at LGW: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/vinyl-cutting-on...

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Dec 20, 2012 16:11 UTC (Thu) by ms (subscriber, #41272) [Link] (4 responses)

Many thanks for the pointers - I figured I should just go RTFM rather than whining on lwn about stuff like this, thank you.

I don't mean to go on, and I'll stop after this, but one other example of why I prefer not to use inkscape for CAD work. This is with inkscape 0.48, so may have been fixed in 0.49.

1. Start inkscape.
2. Set document units to mm (I can't find where to set this as default in preferences, but I'm willing to bet it's there).
3. Quickly create a box, any where, any size - doesn't matter.
4. Select and Path -> Object to Path
5. Now set the X, Y, then Width and Height to nice round numbers. I set X to 30, Y to 140, then Width to 70 (and watch! - X now changes to 29.974, and Width to 70.052), then set Height to 70 (Y now changes to 139.994 and Height changes to 70.012).

This is repeatable, in so far as the X and Width change when you set Width, and the Y and Height change when you set Height. How they change is less predictable. In case it makes any difference, I have now set to Geometric bounding box. Yes, I know I really should go check 0.49 and then file a bug if it still persists.

If people are successfully using Inkscape for proper drafting work then this really must be me somehow - I can't believe anyone seriously using Inkscape for drafting would be willing to cope with this sort of problem.

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Dec 20, 2012 16:31 UTC (Thu) by rleigh (guest, #14622) [Link]

I've run into this issue, but for different reasons: designing microfluidic networks at the micron scale using mm sized page sizes. I ran into the resolution limit of inkscape here--rounding and point placement quantisation to whatever inkscape uses internally as its fundamental unit.

It would certainly be nice if one could specify the native unit system and required precision, e.g. µm, nm, mil (1/1000"), 1/16" etc. to n d.p. to be able to work with suitable precision and accuracy for the task at hand.

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Dec 20, 2012 18:53 UTC (Thu) by bats999 (guest, #70285) [Link]

I believe you need to set the document's default units and guide units to the same thing. Then make sure you have grid snap enabled appropriately. These can be found under File->Document Properties (version 0.48).

I suppose one could choose a degree of precision with the grid spacing; I'm not sure how cumbersome that would be in practice.

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Jan 4, 2013 14:29 UTC (Fri) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

Feel free to pile onto my bug about this. I'm not doing the sort of work you're doing, I'm doing mostly UI mockups and digital art, but it still affects me as well:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/399776

I've been a teacher in various programs where we teach kids how to use Inkscape and this weird floating point thing is one of the most confusing and challenging issues I have to deal with in the classes.

A preview of Inkscape 0.49

Posted Jan 8, 2013 7:41 UTC (Tue) by csawtell (guest, #986) [Link]

Scribus does the same kind of nonsense.