QCad User Reference Manual

# 26. Images

CAD Toolbar:

Menu:

    Draw - Image

Command:

    image

Options Toolbar:

Description:

Inserts a raster image (bitmap) into the drawing.

Note that the DXF file which is created when saving a drawing, contains only a reference to images. It is recommended to keep the image file and the DXF file in the same folder, so QCad can find the image again when the DXF file is loaded later.

Transparent backgrounds are supported for PNG images.

Note that large bitmaps can cause the drawing display to become very slow. Rotating large bitmaps with QCad is generally not advisable. You might want to use a bitmap graphic application to rotate the image before you insert it into a QCad drawing.

Usually you will want images to be in the background of other entities. Please refer to the 'Modify' - 'Send to back' function to learn how to do that.

Procedure:

1. Choose the image file which you want to insert.
2. Type a scaling factor in the options toolbar. A factor of 1.0 means that one pixel of the image will be one unit large in the drawing.
3. Type a rotation angle in the options toolbar. Please note that rotated images can slow down the display process of QCad significantly. In any case it is more efficient to rotate the bitmap in a bitmap editing program before you insert it into QCad.
4. Specify the insertion point of the image. That is the left bottom corner of the image.

Figure 48: Images are often used in the background of a drawing to manually vectorize bitmaps.