Video Transcript
In this QCAD tutorial, we take a first look at the application window of QCAD and learn how to use a construction tool to draw lines. We also learn how to select and delete an object.
When we start QCAD, it automatically creates an empty drawing.
This drawing is displayed in the drawing area at the center.
Arranged around the drawing area are the various toolbars and widgets of QCAD.
The toolbar at the left is used to access construction tools.
This toolbar is called the "CAD Toolbar".
For this tutorial, we will be using this toolbar to start the line drawing tool.
Now, let's draw some lines.
First, we click the line menu button in the CAD toolbar to show the line construction tools.
Next, we click the button for the tool to draw lines from two given points.
QCAD is now ready to start drawing lines.
The first click into the drawing area sets the start point of the first line.
Every click now adds a new line to the drawing.
When we're done, we click the right mouse button to stop drawing connected lines.
Note that the line tool is still active at this point.
We can see this at the top left of the application window where the currently active tool is shown.
When we clicked the right mouse button, we told QCAD that we want to stop drawing connected lines.
We can now set the start point for a new line.
In the status bar at the bottom, we can also see that QCAD is expecting the first point of a new line.
We can now draw some other lines.
To stop the line tool, we click the right mouse button twice.
Once, to stop drawing connected lines.
And once again, to terminate the line tool.
We click the right mouse button a third time, to return the CAD toolbar to the main menu.
So the right mouse button is used in QCAD to cancel the current action.
But also to revert to a previous menu of the CAD toolbar.
This is how most of the construction tools in QCAD work:
First, we choose the construction tool in the CAD toolbar.
Then, we click reference points or entities in the drawing area.
And when we are done, we click the right mouse button or use the escape key to stop the tool.
After stopping a tool, QCAD is back in its neutral state, just like when it was started.
This means that no construction tools are active at the moment.
In this neutral state, we can view the drawing, and do some basic modifications such as selecting and deleting entities.
Now let's see how we can delete a line from the drawing.
To delete a line, we need to select it first, to tell QCAD, which line we want to delete.
To select a single line, we simply click on the line.
For example to select the horizontal line, we move the mouse cursor next to it, until the line is highlighted in light gray.
When the desired line is highlighted, we click the left mouse button to select it.
The line is now shown in the selection color.
By default, the selection color is a dark red.
The small blue and red squares indicate the reference points of the line.
We can now delete the selected line by clicking the delete tool or by pressing the delete key on our keyboard.
Note that the delete tool does not stay active and does not need to be terminated with a right-click.
The delete tool simply deletes the selected entities and ends when it is done.
This is the case for many other tools that don't require any additional information from us.
Note also, that the delete tool required a selection before being run.
This is also the reason why the delete button is now deactivated.
There is no selection right now that could be deleted.
We cannot first start the delete tool and then decide what to delete.
Instead, we always first have to select the entities we want to delete and then we run the delete tool.
There are many other tools in QCAD that can only be applied to a selection.
For example also the tools to cut or copy entities.
For this type of tools, we need to first prepare a selection of entities.
Without a selection, the tool buttons and menu items for these tools are inactive and shown in gray to indicate that the tools cannot be run without a selection.
You should now have a basic understanding of how tools can be started, used and terminated in QCAD.
Be sure to practice this with your own QCAD installation.
Thank you for watching this QCAD tutorial.