QCad User Reference Manual

# 33. Drawing Preferences

The drawing preferences dialog applies to the current drawing only. It is used to set the drawing units, paper size, dimensioning preferences and other drawing specific settings.

    Edit - Current Drawing Preferences

## 33.1. Paper

The paper settings are only relevant when printing a drawing. The paper format and orientation that you choose in this dialog will be applied to the print preview (Figure 67).

Figure 67: Paper settings for the current drawing.

## 33.2. Units

The chosen units and unit formats for lengths and angles are used for displaying coordinates in the statusbar as well as for formatting dimension labels and to scale inserted parts from the part library correctly. See Appendix - Drawing Units for a detailed overview of the available units and formats (Figure 68).

Figure 68: Unit and unit format.

## 33.3. Grid

In this section of the drawing preferences dialog you can adjust the grid spacing and visibility (Figure 69). The default grid spacing is 'auto' which means that the grid scales automatically to a reasonable spacing for the current scale factor of the drawing. You can also set the grid spacing to any preferred fixed values.

Figure 69: Grid settings.

## 33.4. Dimensions

On this tab you can change the measures for the dimension labels, the dimension arrow size and other measures used for dimensioning (Figure 70).

Figure 70: Dimension preferences.

Figure 71: Dimension measures.

## 33.5. Splines

QCad interpolates spline curves with small line segments. In this tab you can adjust the accuracy of this interpolation. A lower value means that the spline quality is poor but the display performance is better. A higher value means that the splines are shown in a higher quality which can reduce the display performance (Figure 72).

Figure 72: Spline settings.