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Dotted Line at Metre drawing unit

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2025 9:35 am
by jdunn
Hi,

I'm having problems when printing a small (relative to the drawing unit) dotted line as part of a title block. when screen-based linetypes is turned off it represents as a series of overlapping lines.

The linetype is 'ISO dot' - but it seems to occur with the the other dotted line linetypes, and I've tried adjusting the linetype scale upwards at various intervals beyond 1000 and downwards below 0.0001. Adjusting the lintetypse scale upwards reduces the number of overlapping lines, ultimately down to 1 but this does not represent the shape any more; adjusting it downwards removed the overlapping lines from 0.3 and below but the line appears continuous rather than dotted, until you get down to 0.000001 where the overlapping lines return.

This issue does not appear where the drawing unit is in millimetres, but I need the drawing unit in Metres.

It seems to be an issue with how Dots are rendered as it only seems to happen with line types that have a 'dot' element, such as iso dot, iso double dash dot, border, divide, dot etc.

I've attached an example file below

Any ideas as to how to solve this?

I'm running Windows 11 and QCAD ver 3.32.4

Thanks

James

Re: Dotted Line at Metre drawing unit

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2025 6:20 pm
by CVH
Hi, and welcome to the QCAD forum.

If you measure the representation of any of the shortest line-segments up then it is about 0.02 units long.
Even while the segment is only about 0.00015 units long or 0.15mm in regards with the unit.
The preference for scaling the Linetype by weight (0.05mm) has only a small influence.

I then presume that dots are rendered as 0.02 units long lines.
Something similar happened for Hatch patterns with dots (pattern = collection of custom Linetype)
Refer to Post & FS#1985.


Not sure, but a custom Linetype might be a solution.
Then replace the zero for a dot by something defined in length, but really short and larger than 1e-9.
A visual dash is positive value, a space is negative value.

You could also file a bug report similar to FS#1985

Regards,
CVH

Re: Dotted Line at Metre drawing unit

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2025 9:57 am
by jdunn
Hi CVH,

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at this, I'll have a look at the posts you link to and file a bug report.

Much appreciated.

James

Re: Dotted Line at Metre drawing unit

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2025 4:05 am
by CVH
Hi,

Seeing the commits on GitHub this will be configurable in an upcoming release. :P
The default length is already much shorter. :wink:

Without a bug fix, this isn't announced in the QCAD Changelog yet ...
Such changes usually aren't ... Or are forgotten.

What is odd is that the fix for line-art rendering is quite different compared with the former fix for Hatch patterns dots.


Regards,
CVH