No need to be philosophical about this, this is just a longstanding bug :-)

It should have been fixed though in the development branch and will be part of the v0.49 release, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/190557

There will be other bugs remaining obviously, so either just fix them or report them. It will get fixed someday...

I know plenty of engineers working with Inkscape, some of them also working on improving Inkscape. I'd guess that we have more engineers working on Inkscape than artists, because engineers are more likely to have some coding skills? So certainly Inkscape should be useable for engineering purposes!

Diederik


On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 10:45 PM, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology <bryan@...2310...> wrote:
To answer your philosophical question with my opinion, Paul:

Wrong or right, it's a fun idea, and I certainly wouldn't want to discourage it.

Philosophically, I think yes, Inkscape may be the "wrong" tool for the job, in that it's been primarily designed with artists in mind, and there are other CAD tools that have been designed specifically for mechanical drawings.

But "right" and "wrong" are probably the "wrong" words to be using in this context. There's a huge amount of crossover between artistic tools and CAD tools, and depending on where you sit in the spectrum, Inkscape would be a great tool. If your mechanical components are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, for instance, Inkscape would be ideal, and hopefully the experts (not me) can work out any showstopper issues for you. If they're precision components for a helicopter engine, steer clear!

 - Bryan


On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology <bryan@...2310...> wrote:
I've also noticed that exact dimensions get changed behind my back, and it bothers me somewhat. Fortunately I can afford to ignore it for almost all the work I do. Although I love Inkscape, things like that make it feel a little bit broken, even if there's a good reason.

I assume the reason is that there's some rounding and conversion to other units going on behind the scenes. But mm is a native SVG unit, right? It seems like these numbers should be stored with the same units & precision as they were entered.

Or perhaps the problem is related to Paul's other concern -- that this figure is a sum of other figures, and so there are rounding errors in the calculation. I'm just guessing.

With recent talk about using Inkscape as a PCB design tool (which I'm very interested in), this may become much more important.

In regards to Paul's other concern: as an artist, I do find it useful that the dimensions given are the total size of the object (bounding box, I assume). For many tools (rectangle, etc), you can get the "naked" dimensions easily enough just by using the tool. But I can also see the use of having a way to get the "naked" dimensions of arbitrary shapes. I don't know of a way.

 - Bryan




On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 5:37 AM, Paul Beard <paulbeard@...400...> wrote:
Maybe sounds like more of a philosophical question that related to development but there are some things Inkscape does that I either don't understand or that work in ways that are counter to what I want.

I seem to have recurring problems with object dimensions changing. This is a problem as I am doing what might charitably be described as mechanical drawings, parts that need to fit together with some precision once they're made into physical objects. I can create an object of some specified dimension (100mm by 100mm) and come back later to find that it's 100.107mm or something. I'm going to see if I can find out what it takes to repro this and file a bug against it if I can make it happen.

I also don't get why the stroke and dimensions are summed in the toolbar that specifies the size of an object. I generally work in outline view with stroke turned off because I don't like that adding a stroke value to an object also changes it's dimension. I'm slowing coming to rethink this as the stroke being the cutter width or kerf, which is useful but if I then have to contend with shifting dimensions, it gets frustrating.

Is there a way to break apart the dimensions of the an object from it's stroke values? Or maybe a toggle that displays the true dimensions and display the stroke and fill for visual reference/clarity? It would useful to work in Normal view and have the colors there but the dimensions then become a problem. If I specify a 3mm opening and 3mm component to go in it, I want those numbers to display while I work.

Maybe Inkscape is the wrong choice for me. I like the ease of use/low barrier to entry and getting things done, and the price is definitely right. But maybe I'm making work for myself.


--
Paul Beard

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--
Bryan Hoyt, Software Developer  --  Brush Technology
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Bryan Hoyt, Software Developer  --  Brush Technology
Ph: +64 3 741 1204     Mobile: +64 21 238 7955
Web: brush.co.nz

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