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TIER4 RESEARCH

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ispyisail edited this page Sep 9, 2026 · 1 revision

Tier 4 Pages Research

Research compiled for License page.

License Information

License Type

  • GNU General Public License v2.0 (GNU/GPL v2)
  • Some sources mention v3.0; verify in repository LICENSE file for exact version

Copyright

  • Copyright holder: "2026 - the QElectroTech Team"
  • Community/collaborative copyright

Key Licensing Principles

Freedom Granted:

  • Free to use for any purpose
  • Free to copy and redistribute
  • Free to modify and create derivatives
  • Free to access source code
  • No licensing fees or commercial restrictions

Obligations:

  • Modifications must remain under same GPL license
  • When distributing, must provide source code
  • Must include copyright and license notice
  • Must document changes made

No Warranty:

  • Software provided "as is"
  • No guarantee of functionality
  • Developers provide no legal guarantees
  • Use at your own risk

What This Means

For Users:

  • Completely free to use
  • No cost, ever
  • No vendor lock-in
  • Your diagrams are yours
  • No telemetry or tracking
  • No subscription needed

For Developers:

  • Can modify and improve
  • Must share improvements under GPL
  • Can use in commercial projects (modified or unmodified)
  • Must provide source code if distributed
  • Same freedoms and obligations apply

For Businesses:

  • Free software reduces costs
  • Can customize for needs
  • Must comply with GPL (share source if distributed)
  • No licensing hassles
  • No dependency on single vendor

Why GPL?

The GPL ensures that:

  • Software remains free for everyone
  • Improvements benefit the whole community
  • No one can make it proprietary
  • Transparency and trust
  • Democratic development model

Relevant Links

Attribution

Standard attribution:

This project uses QElectroTech, licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0

Or in projects:

QElectroTech © 2007-2026 The QElectroTech Team. Licensed under GNU/GPL v2.

Contributing

By contributing code/elements to QET:

  • You agree your contributions are licensed under GPL
  • Your work becomes part of the community project
  • You retain copyright to your contributions
  • QET Team can use/modify your work under GPL terms

Home tools

qelectrotech

Getting Started

Home

🌐 Languages — English · Français · Deutsch

Downloads

Windows without admin rights — the portable archive, no installer

Quick Start Guide

User Manual

FAQ

Tips & Tricks

Guides

Conductors — wire properties, what feeds which export, cables, and hops where wires cross

Wires per terminal — limit the wires on a terminal, chain wiring instead of stars

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

Generic devices — a quick box symbol with terminals on any side, made by a wizard (pending)

Grid size and element size — why symbols aren't all the same scale, and scaling one without leaving the grid

Preferences reference — what each settings page does

Saving and loading settings — your whole setup in one file, to copy or keep

Keyboard-only control — mouseless QET, and what still needs a mouse

Mouse modifiers — what Shift, Ctrl and Alt change while you drag

3D mouse — SpaceMouse pan, zoom and buttons

Aligning items — snap symbols back to the grid, or line them up

Pictures on a sheet — labels, crop, transparency, what they cost in the file

Arcs and curved wires — the Arc tool, pulling an arc in or out, rounding a corner with a fillet, dashed arcs for lighting layouts

Grouping items — select, move and copy several items as one

Finding your place on a sheet — go to a cell like B13 or 4-B7, keep the headers in sight, show the cell limits, zoom and pan

Showing and hiding kinds of items — hide texts, wire numbers, shapes, pictures, tables or cross-references on every sheet

Drawing faster — place without dragging, the S shortcut bar, command search, gestures

Customising QElectroTech — keys, toolbar size and contents, the gesture ring (partly pending)

Managing collections — folders, writability, building your own shortlist

Templates — reusable multi-element blocks, placed by double-click or drag

Search & Replace — bulk property changes

Building a nomenclature query — the BOM/summary table builder

Linking wires across pages — sheet 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; command-line export and layers

The project database — the in-memory SQLite cache

File formats
Elements XML
Project XML
Development

Building from Source

Contributing Code

Automating QET — CLI, XML formats, external tools

CLI Reference — command line usage

JavaScript Scripting — --run, geometry editing, undo

MCP server — let an AI assistant read, verify and edit projects

Connecting an AI assistant — setup for Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Codex, Cursor, LM Studio

Script buttons — stored scripts with an icon, by hand or by an assistant

Live mode — an assistant working in the open project while you watch

Macro recorder — record a task by hand, for an assistant to script

Development Roadmap

Vision — proposal, under discussion

Developer Tools

About

Features

History

Community

License

Contributing to this Wiki

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