Re: Scaling & dimensions ???

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 22:51 -0500, Michael D Schleif wrote:
> Hello.  I am new to Dia, and it looks very promising.
>
> I know that Dia is NOT designed to be CAD software; but, I do not need
> much.  Mostly, I want something small, fast and open source.
>
> Over the next several months, I will visit several hundred buildings,
> and I need to create floor plans, including accurate locations of
> several dozen points of interest in each.  Mostly, this is simple right
> angles, some kind of reasonable scaling, and clearly marked distances
> between interesting points.

It just so happens that I did a floorplan in Dia today.   The polygon
and beziergon in particular are useful. I did run into a couple snags:

 - The connectionpoints can get in the way.  If you happen to put a line
close to a CP, it may actually get moved to connect just by moving the
entire floorplan.
 - There is no scaling or rotation.  Thus, you may need to do e.g. eight
different door shapes, even if they're the same shape.
 - Lines do not connect at their ends, which means having 'a line per
wall' is not very easy.  The polygons work ok.

> I have googled, read FAQ, and searched your archives.  I have not found
> anything to turn me away from Dia; nor have I found out how to do what I
> need done.

It can be done, but then it can be done with Gimp or LaTeX if need be.
Not knowing what you need to do, I can't tell if it can be done.  I can
recommend nothing better than to experiment and see if it works for you.

> I am extremely interested in the XML functionality, since this type of
> diagram is ideal for XML.

We use XML for our internal format

> Also, I wonder how easily it is to put Dia diagrams on a web page?
>
> Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Depends on your needs.  Dia is not intended for this, but that doesn't
mean it can't be used for it.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>