

Some of the key considerations for setting up the drawing include: However, these and many other preferences and drawing elements, such as fonts, layer, line thickness and type, pen colors, etc. Setting the scale of a drawing is the easy part, drawings should be created full-scale (1:1)! The zooming abilities of LibreCAD will make the whole drawing fit in the drawing window or magnify sections to view fine detail. On the other hand, when producing output the drawing will need to be adjusted in size to fit the page size. Generally, output is a printed page, but it can also be a pdf, or exported to another image format.Īs an example, for an annotated drawing of a floor plan to appear correctly when the drawing is reduced in size, or scaled down, to print on an “A4” page (210 x 297 mm), the dimension text would need to be proportional to the floor plan itself prior to being reduced to fit the page. Trying to determine the dimension text size for scaling such a large object would be tedious at best, but a feature of LibreCAD makes it simple. The “General Scale” is used to adjust the dimension text, arrows and related parameters to the sizes suitable for the required page size. Both the page size, and the dimensioning parameters - including the “General Scale” - are configured in the Drawing Preferences.

Specifically the items that need to be addressed are: There are two tabs in Drawing Preferences, “Paper” and “Dimensions”, that require attention for a new drawing. Having to set the unit, page size, layers, etc. each time a new drawing is created can be avoided by using templates. Templates are prototype drawings that provide a method to save a drawing’s configuration so it does not need to be defined each time a new drawing is started. A template’s configuration can include the settings defined in the Drawing Preferences, such as the page size, unit of measure, and the dimensioning format. Templates can also include layers and other drawing elements such as a border and / or a title block. These settings and drawing elements are inherited by a new drawings created from the template. When LibreCAD is launched it creates a new drawing using a default template.

The default template is also used when a new drawing is created within LibreCAD by selecting File -> New or clicking the New icon. The new document is initially called “unnamed document 1”. Any addition new drawings created while LibreCAD is still open will be number sequentially “unnamed document 1”, “unnamed document 2”, and so on. New drawings inherit the template drawing contents, but do not take the template’s name as a file name. Users are prompted for a file name when saving the drawing.

User-defined templates can be created to suit various purposes such as different page sizes or orientation, unit of measure, etc. Click the “Dimensions” tab and adjust the values.(Note the “Length” and “Angle” settings configure the status bar format and not the dimensioning format that appear on the drawing.) Select the “Units” tab and set the “Main Drawing Unit”.On the “Paper” tab set the paper size, orientation and margins as desired.User-defined templates can be used by selecting File -> New From Template or clicking the New from Template icon and then selecting the desired template file.
