Pen Thickness
How do you set the pen thickness for new entities? I've tried setting under Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness, but new lines are always drawn with pen thickness 0. I can set individual pen thickness on existing objects using the same value and that works fine.
Comments
Although it is easier to use, the drawback with using line thickness instead of using pen thickness is that the polygon is hollow as a result of having a line width greater than 0
Just click the little window where either are displayed at the top
Out of interest, what does the Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness actually do then?
Like it says in the dialog - pen thickness is always the same no matter how zoomed in or out you are.
If you want to set the pen thickness and use one of the drawing tools, you will have to make a new drawing tool based on the existing one you wish to use (give it a new name or you will overwrite the default drawing tool you modify), and then it will draw with the new pen thickness.
The disadvantage of using pen thickness is that if you render your map very small the pen thickness will be the same as if you rendered it super large - on the small map the lines would be overpoweringly dominant and a bit of a mess, while on the large map they might be barely noticeable. That's one of the reasons I prefer line width adjustments, since line width is in map units, not inches. Anything in map units will get bigger and smaller with the rest of the map.
This features used to be more visible in the UI, but have now been removed from almost everywhere due to it being useless for most people.
If it were up to me (and it's not), I would disappear the Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness menu item altogether. If I was feeling generous, I might redirect it to a notice with an option to use the line thickness dialog for a few updates until people forgot all about it, and then remove it entirely.
I'm using this for an overlay grid, so this is not a problem. It also applies to circles so this is really convenient.
If you set the pen thickness to .01 of an inch, for example, it will be fine on a normal sized map, but if you print it just as a thumbnail it will cover everything else on the map, so that if those lines are black they will merge into a single black square - and that will be your map.