The research of developing a general methodology for the construction of good nonregular designs has been very active in the last decade. Recent research by Xu and Wong [Statist. Sinica 17 (2007) 1191–1213] suggested a new class of nonregular designs constructed from quaternary codes. This paper explores the properties and uses of quaternary codes toward the construction of quarter-fraction nonregular designs. Some theoretical results are obtained regarding the aliasing structure of such designs. Optimal designs are constructed under the maximum resolution, minimum aberration and maximum projectivity criteria. These designs often have larger generalized resolution and larger projectivity than regular designs of the same size. It is further shown that some of these designs have generalized minimum aberration and maximum projectivity among all possible designs.