Brand new to QCAD.

Tips and tricks you want to share with other users. Tutorials, user submitted documentation, etc.

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ThomasZingalis
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2023 9:43 pm

Brand new to QCAD.

Post by ThomasZingalis » Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:08 pm

Brand new to QCAD! Emailed Andrew but so far no reply. Is the offered book helping new users???

Tom

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Husky
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Re: Brand new to QCAD.

Post by Husky » Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:58 pm

Hi Tom - welcome to the QCAD forum.
ThomasZingalis wrote:
Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:08 pm
Is the offered book helping new users???
The question would be what you are looking for? The books are called "QCAD - An Introduction to Computer-Aided Design" for a reason what says exactly for what audience those books are meant. If you need to learn about CAD in general and like to praxis the new knowledge with the tools provident by QCAD - yes, it will help new users. If you know already all in and outs of CAD then it will "only" teach you how to master most of the QCAD tools to accomplish those rules of CAD. Again - it will talk about most of the QCAD tools - not all of them! Anyway - this forum is your best bet to get info's about not covered tools.

This link will bring you to a book preview side - check it out before you make a "buy now" decision.

https://www.qcad.org/en/qcad-book

This said - when I learned CAD decades ago there was unfortunately no resource out there like Andrews book. I am sure that my start would have been so much easier with this book ... :wink:
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ctdahle
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Re: Brand new to QCAD.

Post by ctdahle » Sun Feb 19, 2023 6:17 pm

Hi Tom,

For me the book was absolutely vital, and I don't have any hesitation recommending it to beginners. I have 40 years of experience in construction and in STEM education, but limited experience with CAD. My employers knew this when I started a new job in December, but they hired me regardless, to be their Bartholemew Cubbins (I am the CAD/CNC/Laser cutter operator and do a bunch of other stuff, i.e. I wear 500 hats) I spent 4 days straight over Christmas just trying every tool and technique listed in the book, made about a hundred small drawings and then just started making QCAD drawings of random objects around the house that I thought could be made on an industrial CNC router or laser cutter. I'm still struggling with lots of techniques that require integration of multiple CAD tools, but if you've never done much serious CAD work (I'd dinked around with SketchUp and a CNC program called EASEL) you will find this book to be of great value.

My only complaint about the book is that it stops explicitly explaining tools and techniques after the first 90 or so pages. After that it just lists tools and commands and gives very brief, or no instruction at all about how to use or integrate them. I'm able to use the program to achieve what I need to do in my daily work, but every day I think, "There's gotta be a faster/easier way to do this" and the book is no help.

What I would like to see is a book that starts by drawing several simple objects, turning them into functional parts (gears, mounting flanges, brackets, housings), converts those into blocks and combines them into some sort of useless working mechanism that the student might build from the QCAD drawing. If I was "really" retired, instead of just semi-retired, I might take a shot at writing that book...but if I was "really" retired, I probably never would have had a reason to learn QCAD!

Christopher Dahle

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