Can I paste along entity with random spacing?

[just_Frank]

I was wondering if there is a way to space the drawings pasted on an entity based on two variables (max and min spacing) to help the spacing seem more natural and less fabricated.

In the example file i use the 0 layer as the main outlines and the guide layer as entities to be pasted onto. I'm hoping to add some randomness to the spacing so it looks less like subway tile and more natural/hand made.

[CVH]

Hi, and welcome to the QCAD forum.

In your example the smallest spacing is 0.45075029", the largest is 1.26651459".
Uniformly this is 1" starting left with half tiles each odd row.
The odd row Guide-lines are 0.5" longer and all start at the right side.

I was wondering if there is a way to space the drawings pasted on an entity based on two variables (max and min spacing) to help the spacing seem more natural and less fabricated.

Not to my knowledge but you have already drawn it 'more natural'.
You can use this as a base to replicate from.

One can scale this, mirror, flip, copy or even mix patterns.

Possible with custom scripting.
Paste along Entity (PE) is however not open source.
The difficulty I see is how to predict that a chain of random values will sum to the total length.
But with proper coding, nothing is really impossible.

Regards,
CVH

[CVH]

add some randomness to the spacing so it looks less like subway tile

A hatch pattern is almost out of the question.
Hatching relies also on a certain repetitive nature.

Still, there are some quite complicated hatching patterns out there, e.g.:
https://coronado.com/hatchpatterns/

Not all can be handled by QCAD for some reason.

Regards,
CVH

[just_Frank]

A hatch pattern is almost out of the question.
Hatching relies also on a certain repetitive nature.

Yes Hatching is out of the question. I've looked pretty extensively through various libraries of patterns and even experimented making my own, but they all always end up looking too repetitive/perfect/manufactured.

Thanks for the new pattern resource though, i'll be looking through that as well.

I might look into doing some kind of script for it.

Thanks for looking into this!