[Solved] What is "Meta Grid Spacing" used for?

[RandallG]

In light of a previous problem I had whereby the Meta Grid Spacing setting affected when the ruler would appear in a drawing, I'd like to find out
exactly what the Meta Grid Spacing is used for. When and why would you change it from the default "auto" setting.
(I had changed the value from 'auto' to '.1', and it drastically increased the zoom level required before the ruler markings would appear)

Thank you.

Randall

[Husky]

When and why would you change it from the default "auto" setting.

Always when it makes sense regarding to the drawing. It can be more efficient in certain situation which will then speed up the drawing process. But - the nature of a Grid/Meta grid is that the spacing of dots or lines are always equal - what limits the application.

Example: If my grid spacing is x=5, y=5 it is easy to draw an exact line etc which is 5, 10, 15 or 50 units long. If I then need an exact line which has to be 23.2 long then my grid is useless. I've to turn it off and need to use an other adequate drawing method to achieve my goal.
Additional the grid origin in QCAD is always at 0,0. This is the UCS (User Coordinate System). Currently no way to change that in QCAD.

Meta Grid:
The Meta Grid is basically a second Grid which can be used just like the other one. Advantage is that you can use an additional and different dot/snap pattern. To make it easier to distinguish those grids the Meta Grid is displayed with lines. If that is still not clear enough you can adjust the color too ...

Husky-2020.03.11-01.png (31.3 KiB) Viewed 3279 times

(I had changed the value from 'auto' to '.1', and it drastically increased the zoom level required before the ruler markings would appear)

Yes, I've seen that post.
Auto means that QCAD decides by itself the visible spacing regarding the zoom factor.
If a zoom factor is used by the user which isn't practical (hight dot density etc) QCAD will change the display to something which is easy to work with. This also applies to the ruler.

Talking about the rulers. Rulers are meant as a "Helping feature" to have a raff idea of object dimension etc. in a drawing. They should never be used as a main source for a precisely drawn drawing.

[RandallG]

Thank you Husky for the excellent explanation. I don't use the ruler for precision but I've come to rely on it as a crutch to help keep me where I need to be in a drawing.

Thanks again for a clear explanation.

Regards,

Randall

[RandallG]

As a side note, after reading your reply, I changed my settings to .1 grid and .5 for meta grid. That did not result in unpredictable zooming like grid = .1 and meta grid = .1.
I'm guessing that if they are both set to .1 it causes some sort of programmatic conflict. Not sure. I'd let Andrew decide that.

Regards,

Randall