There are some decent free CAD programs available to make technical drawings. However, those are probably too complicated for home users. A typical home user (like myself) wants a simple way to create a drawing to scale of the living room, for example. Inkscape has some nice features which would come in handy while drawing to scale. For example the possibility to directly enter the size (H & W) of an object is very convenient. Using this feature you can draw to scale with Inkscape if you have a calculator on your desk, but this is not very productive. Especially when you want to rearrange or resize objects, its error prone too.
So, what do we need to draw our living room to scale? Here's a list:
- The ability to set the scale as property of a drawing. (Default is 1:1)
- All sizes that are entered have to obey the scale.
- An easy way to create distance indicators. This functionality is partially available: you can draw a line and use "DistanceStart" and "DistanceEnd" as Start and End markers for the line. What is missing, is a Mid marker that automatically displays the size of the line (to scale!) in the center of the line.
Apart from these "must haves", some additional "nice to haves" can be identified:
- The possibility to enter simple arithmetic expressions in size and position boxes. This can save the use of a separate calculator. (For example: you enter 35 + 28 cm in the "width" box. When you press enter, the value in the "width" box becomes 63 cm. (The free DTP program Scribus has this, works great!)
- An extensive set of "standard" objects: doors, windows, power outlets, etc.
- A special kind of distance indicator, that sticks to one or more objects and resizes automatically as those objects are resized or moved.
- A wizard to create a basic room layout.
- The possibility to render a 3D view based on the layout.
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I'd personally rather inkscape concentrates on being a great vector graphics program first there is still much to do towards that end. Replicating the sorts of things produced elsewhere and readily available seems a bit silly. I have used Inkscape for these purposes too however and despite the shortcomings found it easier to use than a simple CAD or home design program (like the Google building designer whose name I can't remember just now).
I set my canvas for mm and just put everything down so measurement in cm were entered, ie 1:10 scale. When I had my largest dimensions I adjusted the canvas to fit the document (in doc properties) and added a couple cm for stuff round the edges. Then I just finsihed off the drawing, using an arc for doors, box for windows. Locked that layer and added a new one for text with sizes, then one more layer for titles and description / notes.