Preferences reference
Edit → Preferences opens five pages: General, New project, Export, Print, Shortcuts. That's the whole list — there is no separate "Display" or "Grid" category; those live inside General.
A second, related dialog — Project Properties — reuses one of these pages (New project/New folio) to edit the current project's defaults instead of the application's. See §2.
Source: sources/configdialog.cpp (the dialog shell),
sources/ui/configpage/ (the five pages),
QETApp::configureQET() (where they're assembled).
1. General
The largest page, in several groups:
Collection and title-block paths
Six folder pickers, letting you relocate every collection the app reads: common elements, company elements, custom (your own) elements, company title-block templates, custom title-block templates, and custom macros.
This is exactly the setting behind a real bug. Relocating the common collection to a folder path with no trailing slash used to silently break IEC 81346 prefix lookups for every element (bugtracker #671) — fixed upstream. If prefixes ever stop working after you use this dialog, that history is why.
Interface
- Use system colours
- Use trackpad gestures
- Allow zooming out beyond the folio edge
- HDPI scaling rounding policy (round up at .5, always ceil, always floor, round up at .75, or no rounding) — matters on fractional-scale displays
- Language
Startup state
- Show the grid by default (takes effect on the next launch, not immediately)
- Show guides by default (same — next launch)
Element management
- Highlight elements embedded in the project (vs. referenced from a collection)
- A cap on how many primitives the element editor's parts list will render before giving up — raising it can slow the editor down or crash it on a very complex element
Element texts, independent texts, other texts
Default font size and behaviour for each of these three separately — an element's own dynamic text fields, free-standing text on a folio, and everything else, respectively.
Grid and keyboard movement
- Grid spacing (1–30)
- Keyboard-nudge step (1–30) — how far arrow keys move a selection
- Keyboard-nudge step with Alt held (1–9) — the fine-movement modifier
2. New project / New folio
The same page, two names, depending on where you open it:
| Opened from | Title | Edits |
|---|---|---|
| Edit → Preferences | New project | the defaults every future new project starts with |
| A project's own Properties dialog | New folio | that one project's defaults |
Five tabs, and this is the page behind everything documented in
Project XML's newdiagrams block:
| Tab | Sets |
|---|---|
| Folio | border (rows/columns/size) and title block template |
| Conductor | the default conductor properties every new wire starts with |
| Folio reports | the label formula for next_report/previous_report elements — see Linking wires across pages §4 |
| Cross-references | master/slave label formulas — see Linking elements |
| Guides | default alignment guides |
Changing this from Preferences (no project open) changes what new projects get; it does not retroactively change any project already open. Changing it from a project's Properties dialog changes only that project.
3. Export and Print
These two pages share the same underlying widget — Print is the export widget with printing mode turned on, not a separate implementation. Both expose:
- Output format: PNG, JPG, BMP, SVG or DXF (Print naturally constrains this further)
- Export the whole folio (border + title block + content) or elements only
- Draw grid / draw border / draw title block
- Draw terminals / draw terminal names — off by default, since the interactive editor's terminal markers aren't meant to appear in output
- Keep conductor colours
- SVG-only: transparent background
These are the same settings the File → Export dialog itself exposes — this page just sets what a new export starts with, the same relationship New project/New folio has to a brand-new project.
For the DXF format's own fidelity limits (what does and doesn't survive export), see DXF import & export.
4. Shortcuts
A searchable, filterable table of every registered action and its key combination, with a Reset all button and a per-shortcut reset. The quick filter narrows to: all, assigned only, unassigned only, or conflicts only — the fast way to find two actions fighting over the same key after you've customised things.
A conflict is shown, not silently allowed — QET tells you which other action already uses a key you're about to reassign.
5. What's notably not here
- No per-diagram auto-save interval. QET writes a periodic crash-recovery backup in the background, but its timing isn't a setting — see the User Manual's note on this.
- No project-wide "page size" setting separate from the Folio tab's border configuration above — border rows/columns/size is the page layout.
- No dark-mode toggle distinct from "use system colours." Theme follows the OS unless you opt out of that.
See also: Project XML · Linking elements · Linking wires across pages · DXF import & export
Getting Started
🌐 Languages — English · Français · Deutsch
Guides
Conductors — wire properties, what feeds which export, and cables
Wire & cable catalogue — cable types, IEC 60757 core colours, assigning a core to a conductor
Printing and exporting — paper, PDF, images, and what each path does differently
Linking elements — master, slave, terminal
PLC modules — I/O tables and linking a wire to a specific point
Using the element editor — drawing tools, saving, checks
Preferences reference — what each settings page does
Keyboard-only control — mouseless QET, and the one real gap
Mouse modifiers — what Shift, Ctrl and Alt change while you drag
Managing collections — folders, writability, building your own shortlist
Templates — reusable multi-element blocks, and why clicking one does nothing
Search & Replace — bulk property changes
Building a nomenclature query — the BOM/summary table builder
Linking wires across pages — folio reports
Variables & formulas — %f, %{label}, sequences
Auto-numbering — schemes, sequences, freezing
Terminal strips — strips, levels, bridges
Title block templates — the .titleblock format
Importing EPLAN parts (.edz) — EPLAN Data Portal
DXF import & export — two unrelated features, one format
The project database — the in-memory SQLite cache
Development
Automating QET — CLI, XML formats, external tools
CLI Reference — command line usage
JavaScript Scripting — --run, geometry editing, undo
Vision — proposal, under discussion
