Drawing Dial/Clock/Control Scales: Is there a “Tickmark” or Similar Command?

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RKanarek
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Drawing Dial/Clock/Control Scales: Is there a “Tickmark” or Similar Command?

Post by RKanarek » Sat Apr 23, 2022 2:05 am

Greetings,

For all practical purposes I’m brand new to QCAD Pro. I thought I’d acquaint myself with QCAD by trying to create a dial scale (i.e., an arc with graduated markings [tangential lines] along its length). Yes, it is rather odd for a first QCAD project, but I may be rather odd myself. ;-) )

DesignCAD, the CAD software I’ve used for the last few decades, has a “tickmark” command that works swell for this purpose (of course) ‒ and for a few other purposes (possibly). To quote the manual, it "Draws short lines, or tick marks, along a [preexisting] line, curve, ellipse, or circle entity. These tick marks are spaced at specified intervals along the entity." I can’t find a similar command in QCAD.

Meter Dial Drawing Test - 1.png
Meter Dial Drawing Test - 1.png (7.49 KiB) Viewed 1707 times

Q1. Does QCAD have a Tickmark-like command? If so, what is it called?
Q2. Does (anyone know if) AutoCAD have (has) a Tickmark like command? (No, QCAD’s forum isn’t the place for AutoCAD questions, but I’m curious how unique a Tickmark command is and where else am I going to ask. ;-) )
Q3. As a brilliant QCAD user, what ingenious technique would you use to efficiently draw a neat and tidy dial scale?

Thanks in advance.

Richard

P.S. I attached a partial screen capture of the dial scale I drew in DesignCAD. The garish colors are entirely my fault.

CVH
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Re: Drawing Dial/Clock/Control Scales: Is there a “Tickmark” or Similar Command?

Post by CVH » Sat Apr 23, 2022 12:11 pm

Hi,
This could be done with FlexPainter.
It only doesn't carry a painter definition like your example.

Paste along entity is an option.
Copy/Rotate is another.

Regards,
CVH

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andrew
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Re: Drawing Dial/Clock/Control Scales: Is there a “Tickmark” or Similar Command?

Post by andrew » Sat Apr 23, 2022 9:52 pm

I also think Edit > Paste Along Entity can be of help here.

1. Draw the arc
2. Draw the small tick mark as a vertical line anywhere away from the arc at the desired length
3. Select the small tick mark
4. Edit > Copy with Reference, choose the top of the vertical line as reference point
5. Edit > Paste along Entity, with Parameters:
Screenshot 2022-04-23 at 22.42.32.png
Screenshot 2022-04-23 at 22.42.32.png (20.72 KiB) Viewed 1637 times
6. Click arc as base entity to paste along

In the same way, you can do the long tick marks, but with Positions set to 11.

Note that there will overlaps as there will be small tick marks 'under' the larger ones.

For the text, I'd probably create one text, rotate it with multiple copies and then adjust the text labels manually.

It's a pretty specific task that is usually not covered by a generic CAD system like QCAD. One could of course always create a script that covers this specific task using the script interface of QCAD.

RKanarek
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Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2022 11:59 pm

Re: Drawing Dial/Clock/Control Scales: Is there a “Tickmark” or Similar Command?

Post by RKanarek » Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:29 am

Greetings,

Thank you both for your kind and helpful replies. Perhaps drawing tick marks isn't such a bad way to begin learning QCAD after all!

Cordially,
Richard

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