Re: Dia help required

[Nico Rikken <nico nicorikken eu>]

Dear mr. van Vuuren,

Thanks for reaching out to the mailinglist.

Having used Dia in the past for eletrotechnical drawings, I recently
started using LibreCAD for technical floor plan diagrams and was
impressed by its features and workflow. So I can confirm the sentiment
on the mailinglist that other software might be more suitable.
Besides LibreCAD I also heard postive feedback on FreeCAD, but I have
heard that it is targeting 3D modelling, and thus LibreCAD is more
suitable for 2D work.

Personally I have a bias for using Free Software, so I won't comment on
AutoCAD or Sketchup. But what I heard their business models keep
changing, so I would recommend to only lock yourself into software, and
not so much the businesses, by using Free Software. So I recommend
LibreCAD.

Although it is worthwile to learn Inkscape and use it for many
projects, I discourage you to use it for technical drawings. With
Inkscape (and similar vector drawing software) line width is bound to
the print size. So you have to know your target beforehand (A4, A3), or
make adjustments when switching paper size. With CAD software this is
seperate, so you can easily create prints of different size or detail
shots, all with keeping line width to the same readible size.

To get you started with LibreCAD, I recommend this YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpmFHRuNeI0efdg1NXUkaWFFLdtXOCr17
I watched the first few tutorials and it got me going pretty quickly.

In LibreCAD perhaps the symbols you desire are not yet available, but
you can easily create them yourself, or get them from community
websites like: https://blocks.draftsperson.net/ You'd have to convert
them first though: 
https://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/oda_file_converter (via 
https://wiki.freecadweb.org/FreeCAD_and_DWG_Import )

Good luck with your project,
Nico Rikken (NL)