Dimensioning to grouped items

[LarryO]

This is a long standing frustration that I have encountered over the years from the versions of VW with viewport functionality.

I cannot snap to items that have been grouped in the layer environment when dimensioning them in viewport annotation mode on a sheet.

What am I missing?

 

I group items to assign the groups visibility classes for use in viewports while the basic components are assigned to classes that control lineweight, colour, linestyle, etc.

Edited April 18, 2019 by LarryO

[Pat Stanford]

Do your Class Options include one of the Snap options (Grey/Snap, Show/Snap, Show/Snap/Modify)?

 

What snap options do you have on in the Snaps Pallet?

 

I just tried a simple group consisting of a Line, Rectangle, and circle. I then made a Viewport on a sheet layer from it.

 

When I edit the annotations, and have Snap to Object turned on in the Snaps Pallet, I can snap to all of the points inside the group. With Snap to Intersection turned on, I even get the intersection of objects in the group and objects in the Annotations.

 

What are you doing differently?

[LarryO]

Show snap modify is definitely the setting for both class and layer. The view is 2d plan and wireframe. The objects are polylines, rectangles, circles and dashed lines. The orientation is such that the polyline appears to be a stair stringer form from steel channel with rectangles forming the mounting and closure plates at both ends and two parallel rows of circles solid black representing holes in the steel. The stringer is drawn at the intended slope in the design layer space and the viewport is rotated in the sheet space so as to show the steel horizontal. At this point the stringer is dimensioned with the constrained linear dimension tool in ordinate mode, typically from left to right. I've grown accustomed to the circle snaps rotating away from vertical/horizontal but snapping to the polyline when grouped frustrates me to no end. An additional note is that the paired circle is also embedded within a symbol which representing instances of bolted in treads.

Snaps do not include grid, distance, smart edge, nor tangent, the rest are active. All object points active, no datum functions, nor extensions from smart points and alternate coordinate system off.

Most of the time the sequence in which I do the tasks things go smoothly, but not snapping occurs enough to be frustrating. I'll turn on the ques for a time to know when and which snaps are/are not operating.

[Pat Stanford]

Can you upload a file that shows this behavior for you? If we can replicate it we can probably get it fixed. It does not sound like the desired behavior. I think maybe the part I was not testing was the rotation of the viewport.

[LarryO]

Arrgh, happened again this morning. Viewport was not rotated this time; and it was snapping to centre points but not some of the end points of simple lines. Saving the file didn't change the behaviour but restarting VW did. I just updated the drivers to my Razer mouse, its been a couple of years. Maybe that will fix the issue.

[Ride]

I'm having snap issues too.  Today I couldn't snap to anything on a 3D model (plan view), but yesterday I could (I was trying to add a few dimensions to a viewport that I had already dimensioned).  

 

If I can replicate the behaviour, I'll post it here.  Maybe the 2 issues are related.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Ride

[LarryO]

I think I have figured out how to repeat the situation. I have a simple polygon without any arcs, had six sides, appearing like a stair stringer made from a C channel. it was drawn up in layer space on an incline with a symbol representing bolted on stair treads duplicated up the incline. When viewed through the view port only pairs of black solid fill circles are shown representing the holes that need to be drilled through the stringer. Now this was all grouped and assigned a class that could be visible or not. Separates the stringer from the guardrail that I also usually draw at this time but probably not required to show the problem. Now on a sheet create a basic view port and turn on the applicable layer. Note that I normally have a layer override so the class colours all become black or grey for printing. Rotate the view port so the stringer becomes horizontal, usually some where between 28 and 32 degrees. Crop the view port. Scale is around 1:10 to 1:16 but not part of the problem as far as I can tell. Now this is what I am thinking is triggering the inability to snap; flip the view port horizontal. I often do this to show the opposite stringer without having to draw another. Now try to sequentially dimension across the top side of the stringer. You will probably be able to snap to circle centres but not all of the polyline vertexes nor the circle quadrants. The latter for obvious reasons, the rotataion of the view rotates those as well. But the flipping of the view port causes the vertex snap point to be somewhere else other than the anticipated visual location.

Writing this at home so I don't have access to a file.

I am also wondering if there is a connection to the ghost of our titleblock symbol that I posted an image of in a previous posting. That is a plugin of a page based symbol (the green ones) that is being resized based upon the scale of whichever view port one happens to be adding annotation to rather than the 1:1 scale of the sheet where they typically reside. It regains its proper size through any form of editing or generally movement. The lines and text, etc still display correctly throughout, only the perceived size changes, that tint that appears when selection is made.