Hello, a few Q's about Technical Drawing with PDN.

[5yNth3t1k]

I read the rules. I searched. I ran out of patience.

 

Back story: I do a lot of technical drawing using MS Paint ( win 7 ) and I like how fast it is and easy but....

 

 

Circles: Draw circle from center point ( dragging out the radius.... ) will this be a feature in the future?

Lines: Simple line drawing ( lines are squared with no need to hold down shift ) .

Lines: Continuous ( you can draw a box in one go etc )

Angles: Set an angle and then draw lines at that angle etc.

 

Above are things I would like.... dreams a free...

 

Essentially I am trying to find an alternative to MS Paint that uses the raster graphics and is 2D tech drawing style.

 

Any advice?

 

I was a programmer I would make my own drawing program, but I am not. I was hoping that PDN would

be the replacement for MS paint... but it's pretty much the same for what I do. Oh well.

 

It's pretty much the circles that kill the buzz, drawing them out from the corner is just lax programming and

could be fixed pretty easily. The zoom out from a point in PDN proves that centre point circles can be done ( MS paint has the zoom stuck to the top left corner...)

as it's the same mathematics in play.

 

I really do not want to go to vector CAD... I love MS Paint....

 

Thanks!

 

me. xxx

 

PS. Included sample of how I draw. : - )

 

 

 

 

[NinthDesertDude]

+1 on drawing a circle from the center. Should be default behavior. I am always repositioning circles after they're drawn.

Continuous line drawing would be nice, but it's of small value since you can stop moving the mouse, press enter, and start again (for the most part, anyway; this sucks for beziers because you usually move the mouse away from the end tip).

I think holding shift to constrain to 90 degree angles for lines is easy enough, shouldn't be necessary to add.

Of course, even if these are added, I don't see why you would want to continue using paint.net for technical drawing where Coreldraw, google sketchup, autoCAD etc. all provide one absolutely essential workflow that is way out of scope for paint.net: snapping to geometry.

[Tactilis]

10 hours ago, 5yNth3t1k said:

I do a lot of technical drawing using MS Paint ( win 7 ) and I like how fast it is and easy but....

Circles: Draw circle from center point ( dragging out the radius.... ) will this be a feature in the future?

Lines: Simple line drawing ( lines are squared with no need to hold down shift ) .

Lines: Continuous ( you can draw a box in one go etc )

Angles: Set an angle and then draw lines at that angle etc.

 

Any advice?

 

I really do not want to go to vector CAD... I love MS Paint....
 

I note your last sentence but looking at the nature of your drawing, I would honestly advise taking a bit of time to investigate a vector drawing package, such as Inkscape.

There will be a learning curve, of course, but the rewards are high as you will be able to do everything shown in your drawing, and so much more. There are lots of tutorials available.

 

With a vector package it's easy to layer the different shapes, change their positions, sizes, line thicknesses, fill colours, etc.

You can easily duplicate shapes, or even collections of shapes, and can re-use then from one drawing to another.

If you wish to blend the capabilities of vector and raster, you can export a vector drawing from Inkscape as a PNG, scaled to whatever resolution you want (and preserving the sharpness of the edges of lines), and finish by raster editing in Paint.NET.

IMO, it's worth the effort to learn to use the best tool (or a combination of tools) for the job.