This tutorial shows how QCAD can be used on a portable drive or USB stick.
Contents
Objective
QCAD can be installed or extracted on a portable drive or USB stick without the need to install it on the computers hard drive. This way, it is possible to carry QCAD along on a portable drive and to use it on any computer with an appropriate port and a supported operating system.
To make sure that QCAD stores its configuration on the portable drive, you will have to use the -config command line switch to tell QCAD which directory to use to store the configuration files. You might want to create a Batch or Bash script that does that for you when launching QCAD.
QCAD Portable for Windows Systems
If you are using Windows, download and extract the .zip package to your portable device. Once plugged in, you can start QCAD from the portable device. For example, if the portable device is mounted on drive letter F:, you can start QCAD with:
F:\QCAD\qcad.exe -config F:\config
QCAD Portable for Linux Systems
Under Linux, download and extract the .tar.gz package. Start QCAD for example with:
/mnt/myusbstick/qcad/qcad -config /mnt/myusbstick/config
QCAD Portable for macOS
Under macOS, copy the .app bundle inside the downloaded .dmg to the device. Start QCAD for example with:
/Volumes/MyUSBStick/QCAD-Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/QCAD-Pro -config /Volumes/MyUSBStick/config