As an engineer, I like Inkscape because it is NOT like CAD (I like the simplicity and free form nature), though I do enjoy some of the newer features that bring Visio and Sketchup type abilities. However, some of the things you are looking for are possible (see below) and you are welcome and encouraged to contribute patches for anything else you would like. Some things could be done with the python extension script capabilities.
Donn wrote:
Inkscape wishlist - October 2007 Curr. version 1.45.1 on Kubuntu Dapper Drake.
Please forgive the intrusion, perhaps this will be of use to someone and maybe it'll spark a thread of ideas. (Is there a more appropriate place to submit wish-lists?)
I have recently been designing our house using inkscape to do the top-view plan. I have found it far more flexible than the only other option, Qcad. While I have enjoyed the use of layers and clones, there are several down- sides that I thought I'd list in the form of wishes for the future. I am sure there are ways to do these things, and misconceptions on my part, it's just the way I came-at the thing.
THE LIST
- Rotate entire page - the plan is designed square, but the house is seated
at an angle. Nice to be able to see the house angled, but continue to design square.
Have you tried selecting all the objects, grouping and then rotating ?
- Clones break when you move them to new layers. If you cut/paste them, or
just shift pgup/pgdown them, all clones become groups.
- It would be super if "symbols" (original groups that are used as clones)
could be kept in a separate .svg file and referred-to within other svg files. That way, the symbols don't have to be *in* every file that uses those clones.
then you start to have file dependency hell. I do keep a separate file for my favorite symbols/drawn objects which I copy into various drawings. I want them to be a pure copy so I can modify them any way I want in that particular drawing.
- Measurements: If there were at least a ruler tool that could be measured in
length (at any angle) rather than the width/height of it's bounding square, it would really help in designing accurately when things don't remain square. Better yet, a way to get the length of a section of an element - perhaps by selecting nodes and having it show the lengths in a readout somewhere. Or, when you draw a line it could show the length along with the other usual info.
yes, a ruler tool would be nice, in fact, the whole SVG unit transformation specifications could use some work - feel free to contribute some ideas on this.
- A tool to measure that draws lines with arrow ends and includes a label
which you can control to display units as you need. For example, I used 10 px = 1 m on my drawing. So I would like to see measurement lines saying: <--- 10m ---> That would mean I get to enter a conversion formula somewhere so that it prints the correct value and unit. 6. A label near the W/H display which auto-calculates the area of a thing; at least for rectangles and three node shapes. More complex shapes would be good. 7. A tool whereby you can draw a path and have it calculate the area under it, with a pull-out label showing the area (again with unit and conversion properties).
7.5 (I just remembered) It would be nifty if a kind of "spreadsheetyness" could infiltrate Inkscape. For example, I often wanted to add a list of areas (that I manually calculated and noted as text objects here and there) together and display a total area in a text object on another layer. If that could be automated by variables and formula... Just imagine!
Inkscape does allow lines with arrowheads - doesn't submit the measurements automatically but again it's not CAD, but is thankfully much simpler. All the "auto calculate" kind of stuff would make for a nice python extension.
- A way to group objects *across* multiple layers: I wanted to clone my
entire plan which has many layers (one for lights, one for doors, one for walls, etc.) so that I could rotate it to face North-East. I wanted to be able to work within the original group and have the clone reflect the changes in scale, shape and movement I make. But as soon as I group my plan, all the layers snap to one layer.
- Node aligning:
- Align to bottom/top/left/right as opposed to an average align to the
middle of all the nodes selected. 2) Select more than one object and select nodes across them and align. Great for lining walls up when they are not one path.
- A way to export the selected item(s) out to an svg file. I find that
copy/paste between Inkscape instances on Kubuntu just plain does not work. So I end up making "cut.svg" files with one item in it so I can import that to the next file. Boring really. So being able to pull something out of a busy file and send it to a file would speed that.
Cut and paste between files does work - you just have to open the 2nd file from within the first file