Preferably free, of course, because what I want to do is of negligible consequence.
Anyway, I want to able designate a point, then tell it to draw a line one inch long at a heading (bearing?) of 30 degrees, then draw a line two inches long at a heading (bearing?) of 120 degrees, and so forth. Two dimensions only. If I can then select my object and recreate it at specified points, more to the cool.
This will be a one-time project, so a time-limited demo of a commercial program is OK.
My first choice would be Google SketchUp. It’s free, it uses inches (or mm), and has a nice protractor tool for setting angles. You can also export the drawing in a lot of image formats.
SketchUp is a 3-D modelling tool, so you’ll need to set Camera > Parallel Projection and Camera > Standard Views > Top. After that, you should be set.
If all you want to do is draw points and lines of particular lengths at particular angles, then I think practically any drawing program will work for you. One I use for simple, general-purpose drawing is XFig. Others you may want to check out are Dia (specializing in diagrams) and Inkscape (more geared towards artwork). All of them are Free Software.
Over at Tucows I tried several CAD programs and one of them worked for me: GrayTech’s CAD X11. I still haven’t figured out a polar line drawing function, but it allows you to pick a point, enter delta X and Y, then draw from that endpoint in a chain. Since all my segments were the same length and the only angles involved were some multiples of 30 degrees, it was pretty easy to work out.
If anyone is still reading (:D), what I needed to draw was a fractal design of an element for a digital TV antenna, inspired by this (based on the illustration on the far right, about a quarter of the way down the page). Finished .dwg available on request. I’ll cut it out, paste it to a piece of wood, drill some holes and use it for a wire-bending jig.
Hey, people have done more for less. I’m famous for it.
Oh, Cool! Good luck with the project, and please post pics of the finished antenna!
I’m interested in knowing how well this would improve a DTV signal. My reception has been misbehaving lately, and I would make one of those if it helped.
It is—you didn’t specify what operating system you were using, so I didn’t want to discount any program unnecessarily. Are you using Microsoft Windows? If so, it’s possible to install XFig using Cygwin. Also, there are one or more clones of XFig for MS Windows out there. One of them is called WinFIG. Looking at your antenna diagram, it seems XFig (or WinFIG or whatever) should be able to handle that nicely.
No pics as I don’t have a digital cam. Suffice to say that they are pretty ugly, having been made on a base of scrap 2X4’s. The beauty lies in the fractal elements. And what you need is a really good UHF antenna. Follow the links from the links from what I posted, and you can figure out what you need.
I hear there is some trouble with DTV, which may not be attributable to your signal, but to atmospheric conditions.
But if you like to tinker around with stuff, this is fun.
I’m famous for it.