Is there any simple vector drawing application that can let me make rough sketches with arbitrary units?
For example, I want to be able to draw a rectangle that is exactly 2’6 x 12".
If I scale it by 50% it should be 15" x 6". I want to be able to measure distances. I don’t want to keep track of a scale/conversion/ratio in my head, that’s a perfect job for computer.
In the old Sketchup software (RIP) you could type the measurements in while drawing or manipulating objects. It was extremely fast and intuitive. I don’t need 3d modelling; it was just a great UI.
All I can find is CAD and it is way overkill. Not gonna design a cotton gin or a circuit board. I just want to make a simple floor plan to see if the furniture would fit the way I want to arrange it. Or estimate material requirements for projects.
Desired features: Layers, customizable/smart keyboard shortcuts, colors, rectangle circle lines, transform/scale/skew/rotate, group/lock objects, rulers grids guide snapping.
anything?
Agree although surprisingly the About section is a little vague on some of what OP wanted.
OP, it’s an SVG editor so should be perfect for real world projects you allude to. You can set the canvas size and change the default units with relative ease; Pixels, points, millimetres and inches but also Parsecs if you want to go wild, and as it’s SVG it’ll scale as needed without issue. https://logosbynick.com/change-the-canvas-size-in-inkscape/
There are also measurement tools too and areas can be calculated (but objects do need to be converted to paths to measure areas).
Everything else is covered in the about.