Hi Erik, No-one has answered, so I'll give it a go. .. although it's been a few years since I last played in this space. On 28/04/17 16:22, Erik Christiansen via luv-main wrote:
A simple drawing utility which will allow me to generate lines and boxes of keyboard-entered dimensions, drag them (or select and move a keyboard-entered offset) would really do the trick. Although being able to rotate lines would also be useful for the roof. I take this to mean 2D drawing, ..you have no interest in 3D. so will only answer on this basis
Ah ... there's LibreCAD. Does anyone know if that's so fancy that the learning curve is too long to be worth it for single-use? (Seems to be more for mechanical drawings.) I have not used LibreCAD, .. but a number of years ago I used QCAD, ... LibreCAD is a fork of community edition of QCAD, although as I understand both products have moved on from that position, so now unsure how they differ. However when I used QCAD a number of years ago, I found it was quite capable to draw my 2D floor plans and 2d elevations, and I could enter the lines position, length angle all from the keyboard. To start with there was a bit of a learning curve, understanding how to switch into command mode, benefits of working in layers, and there is a million icons around the page that do useful stuff, but till you learn what they do they remain a mystery. You could invest a lot of time learning all the ins and outs. But the good news is to lay down a line where you want it and to the length you want it is simple enough.
Most floor plans need to add dimensions, the advantage with a cad program is how easy that is (possibly on another layer so you can hide them when you dont want them) So I just installed LibreCAD and the interface seems similar to what I used previously, and I was able to quickly lay down a couple of lines with the keyboard using commands I learnt in QCAD. I seem to remember something quirky in QCAD in having to set page size before starting my drawing, otherwise it might not fit on my print out, .. I cant quite remember what that was, .. I dont know how LibreCAD handles that but it might pay for you to experiment with laying down a couple of dimensions to size and then see if you can get the output you want before putting a lot of effort into drawing details.
AHA, I've just opened LibreOffice Draw for the first time, and spent an hour to get it to draw a box. (It defaults to a line width of 0, so nothing appears. Then it defaults to goddam fill. Then ... ) I love LibreDraw for drawing block diagrams at work , and while I did use it to draw a floor plan once I just wouldn't recommend it, you will spend a lot of time going into dialog boxes altering position and size it you didn't get it right the first time with the mouse.
BUT, is there a way to move a line to a keyboard-entered position? Mouse-fiddling to a precise point is such a time-wasting torture that it's just not worth pursuing, I find. In my mind the drafting/mechanical drawing world has moved on from the days of 2d drawing into 3d drawing / modeling , so it seems like the 2D drawing tools are not getting a lot of love nowdays.
My suggestion for a simple one off drafting task, the small effort you need to put in to learn the basics in LibreCAD is worth it for the productivity you will gain in entering your lines and dimensions from the command line... YMMV Cheers, and good luck Steve