Jittered Document - Help!

[Kanastrous]

Can't think of a better description: imagine a drawing where most of the lines and shapes have moved just a little bit, in random directions, "jittering" the image. It's a fairly complex drawing in terms of detail, and now it's useless hash.

A problem I have noticed before is that I will select, say, one particular line or group of lines and move it - and some other element of the drawing that isn't selected or connected to the selection (sometimes even on another layer!) will move or change when I move or change the selection - and what's really odd is that the non-selected element doesn't move in the same way or direction, but rather in some random direction at a 1-to-1 ratio to the item that *is* selected...

Between the last good version of the drawing and this messed-up version, I selected everything and moved it a bit up the page. This is likely *when* the jitter happened, but I don't understand *why*.

I *have* to figure out how this happened; I can't place any confidence in the tools until I know why, and any more time spent working in VW risks being totally wasted if this happens again.

[Ray Libby]

I've never heard of this, would it be possible to post the file here?

[Kanastrous]

The file can be downloaded from this link here:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bFFNck8zT2JOQnl4dnc9PQ

[Ray Libby]

Could you give me step by step directions on how to recreate the problem? Everything seems normal in the file.

[Kanastrous]

Apparently selecting and moving the stand at the left side of the page is what did it. Or possibly selecting and moving the device drawing (the views on the right). Using shift+directional arrows to make the move.

I'm manually reconstructing it now, having no other choice.

@&$#%*^!

[Ray Libby]

Still can't reproduce it. If you could be more specific I might be able to help.

[Kanastrous]

Alas I didn't get to note the exact sequence of commands leading to the mess-up.

Well, thanks for looking the file over. I really am grateful that you're willing to take the time and try to figure it out.

If I can untangle any more of what led to this, I'll post it right away. In the mean time I'm resigned to just having to redo a day's drawing.

Thanks again,

karl

[Pat Stanford]

I agree with Ray, I can't see any problem with the file. Was the one you sent "jittered"?

If so, you may want to download it and take a look at what we are seeing.

I have attached a PDF of the file on my machine.

It almost sounds like a video card problem. Have you updated your video card drivers recently?

[michaelk]

Kanastrous,

Are you talking about things like the non concentric circles on the "knobs" around the screen?

[Kevin McAllister]

Is what you're referring to as "jitters" the disconnected nature of the lines in my screen grab (see file link below)?

I have had this happen before. It was a result of accidentally scaling a group of selected objects but not noticing at the time. I was able to duplicate a similar result using the Resize tool. Unfortunately the Autocad-type workflow of using individual lines makes a drawing more susceptible to this type of error than an using an object based approach.

Perhaps when you were shifting the whole drawing, you grabbed a scale handle accidentally. It looks as though it may have only been the SectionCutScale class that was editable at the time.

My two cents,

Kevin

[Kanastrous]

Pat - The 'jittering' I'm describing is in the non-concentricity of the circles that should be concentric, and the many lines that ought to intersect to form corners but are instead offset from one another. It's in the .pdf you linked, too, and that's both the way the file displays on-screen, and how it prints.

michaelk - Yes, the messed-up-knobs is one of the things I'm talking about. Also, the way that radii should end right on the ends of lines, but don't. And the way that lines making up - for example - the draw latches are all randomized, and to some degree just-plain missing.

Kevin - Yes, what you linked is exactly what I mean by 'jittered.' Alas between the last correct printing of the sheet and noticing the messed-up-ed-ness, there were no scaling operations performed, at least, no known or deliberate ones. I don't think the effect is sufficiently consistent that I'd suspect rescaling as the issue...and anyway everything still measures out correctly (ie a given dia. 1/4" knob is still 1/4").

mike - I checked the menu and 'Rough Sketch' was not selected (it's set to Wireframe).

Thanks for the brainstorming, guys! Still redrawing...

Edited March 30, 2010 by Kanastrous

[mike m oz]

My guess is when you did the move you had the Class Options set to something other than Show/Snap/Modify Others and thus you left parts of the linework behind.

The quality of the source DWG drawing also looks suspect. There are arcs made up of small segments with gaps which one would not expect in a good CAD drawing. Have you checked the source DWG to make sure it wasn't actually drawn like that? Can you post the DWG here?

Edited March 30, 2010 by mike m oz

[Ray Libby]

Good idea Mike, the original .dwg would be very helpful.

[Kanastrous]

The original .dwg was exported from Sketchup, which indeed exports everything as itty-bitty unassociated line segments (which I then clean up as necessary in Vectorworks, replacing segments with proper lines, radii, etc as needed). Yes, arcs may be composed of small line segments but those line segments were not originally dispersed the way that they are now...

This is not the basic problem, though - I'm looking at a half-inch stack of documents produced in precisely the same way over the last several weeks, not one of which displayed this kind of misbehavior while I was working on them.

btw this weird sketchup->vectorworks approach is dictated by the peculiarities of our production workflow here. Just the way it is.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Kanastrous

[mike m oz]

It won't have spontaneously happened by itself. It has to be due to something you did in this file.

As before my guess is that when you did the move you had the Class Options set to something other than Show/Snap/Modify Others and thus you left parts of the linework behind. Its possible that you also did this in a view other than Top/Plan View and because the objects are Screen Plane objects the moves are not consistent in Top/Plan View.