Dear mr. van Vuuren, Thanks for reaching out to the mailinglist.
Having used Dia in the past for eletrotechnical drawings, I recently started using LibreCAD for technical floor plan diagrams and was impressed by its features and workflow. So I can confirm the sentiment on the mailinglist that other software might be more suitable. Besides LibreCAD I also heard postive feedback on FreeCAD, but I have heard that it is targeting 3D modelling, and thus LibreCAD is more suitable for 2D work. Personally I have a bias for using Free Software, so I won't comment on AutoCAD or Sketchup. But what I heard their business models keep changing, so I would recommend to only lock yourself into software, and not so much the businesses, by using Free Software. So I recommend LibreCAD. Although it is worthwile to learn Inkscape and use it for many projects, I discourage you to use it for technical drawings. With Inkscape (and similar vector drawing software) line width is bound to the print size. So you have to know your target beforehand (A4, A3), or make adjustments when switching paper size. With CAD software this is seperate, so you can easily create prints of different size or detail shots, all with keeping line width to the same readible size. To get you started with LibreCAD, I recommend this YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpmFHRuNeI0efdg1NXUkaWFFLdtXOCr17 I watched the first few tutorials and it got me going pretty quickly. In LibreCAD perhaps the symbols you desire are not yet available, but you can easily create them yourself, or get them from community websites like: https://blocks.draftsperson.net/ You'd have to convert them first though: https://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/oda_file_converter (via https://wiki.freecadweb.org/FreeCAD_and_DWG_Import ) Good luck with your project, Nico Rikken (NL) _______________________________________________ dia-list mailing list dia-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia
