Snap Mode When No Command Active

William Bishop

Does anyone know how to keep snap mode working even if no command is active? I like to be able to have my cursor jump to the actual snap locations at all times, not just when I'm drawing a line, etc. Otherwise is easy to forget that snap is off and draw or measure something and end up with odd points.

John Gaunt

I guess you mean object snap, not the snap which makes the cursor jump in set increments.

I don't know a way to have it always active. I often use F3 to deactivate it for operations such as placing text or leaders.

Sometimes have to check which way I left it last.

Many lisps don't work properly with osnap on, I either manually deactivate it or write in a command to turn it off for those.

William Bishop

Yes, actually I do mean the generic snap and not just object snap. In Autocad, when you toggle the Snap button, the program switches in and out of snap mode, regardless of whether or not you are actually doing anything (drawing, measuring, etc). This is, in my mind very useful. Bricscad could have a mode switch so that the user could decide if and when to implement this functionality.

John Gaunt

Ah sorry, I guess it should have been obvious. I remember that difference from when I first swapped to Intellicad.

I looked for a way to make the behaviour more familiar, but couldn't.

It was helpful at times, but more often I find it useful in Bcad to be automatically off when selecting objects then turn itself on as it does to move, copy or stretch to a snap distance.

Strangely, after about 15 years away from Acad I still expect snap to foul up my selection. Every time.

 I have wondered if an on/off/on sort of behaviour would work, but that's a fairly complicated routine to get used to when I never quite adapted to off/on. 

William Bishop

Yes John...I understand your point. And we tend to like what we are accustomed to and get frustrated when it changes. I'll get over it.

William Bishop

Here's a workaround (somewhat):

Since I don't use a tablet (who does?), I reprogrammed the F1 key as a command which activates snap. I used "LINE" but it could be any such command. Probably a good idea to make it your most common command. Then when you are in SNAP mode and looking around a drawing and want the cursor to jump to snap points you just hit F1. This puts you in the LINE command and, of course, this activates SNAP mode. You could continue with LINE (or your favorite command) or just click on the command you really want (or hit ESC to back out). This new command overrides your F1 target command and you're on your way!  It's very convenient since the F1 key is very easy to find w/ your left hand..almost w/o looking. It's not quite the same because you have to move your cursor off the point to click on some other command. This may be useful or not..... I'll give it a try.

Patrik Sparrman

Excuse a stupid question, but whats the use for this??  If you set the object-snaps without an active action they will be there as soon as you start drawing or measuring or whatever you want to do and they will stay on.  If no action is active whats the use for playing around with a snapping mouse ?? If you on the otherhand start a command and then pick your snap you will loose it as soon as the command is finished.  ( in my world a regression as this was not the case up until v7) I thought this was some kind of Acad standard.   My next question is DOES ANYONE LIKE THIS REGRESSION ??

As for grid-snaps I feel the same applies. BUT I have created three buttons 1. Set gridpoint  2. Snap AND grid on  3. Snap AND grid off

Patrik

Patrik Sparrman

By the way who on earth wants a snapless grid or vice versa ?  This is just a remnant from the old days with x286 machines with poor graphicscards.

John Gaunt

The mention of object snap was my misunderstanding although from memory Acad used to constantly display if an osnap was set, at the cursor so you didn't need to check it was on or off.

I don't use grids at all (extra lines don't help for me), but for say circuit diagrams they are often used.

OTOH I use snap quite often, usually set at the distance between lines in parts schedules.

A constantly set snap is helpful if working to (F9) snap constraints, to see if you will be on a line before issuing a command.

If you do that sort of work the grid could substitute, if you use a grid and if it's set to snap.

I don't quite understand about 'losing the snap'.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

@ Patrick,
Staying off topic here...
Regarding your 'losing the esnap' problem:
I do not consider this a regression, but an improvement...
But if you prefer the 'old' behaviour all you have to do is customize the menu (or create your own partial cui) and change the commands for the esnap buttons from _nearest to '_nearest (with an apostrophe) etc.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

@ John,
Still off topic...
'Losing the esnap': If you use one of the esnap buttons only that esnap will be used for the next point and it won't become permanent.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Oops:
'If you use one of the esnap buttons'
Should be:
'If you use one of the esnap buttons during a command'

John Gaunt

I don't recall a temporary esnap override being effective for more than one pick, nor being able to set permanent esnaps during a command.

Perhaps it happened and I didn't notice.

Patrik Sparrman

Roy  THANKs thats brilliant both me an my colleagues felt this was a backward step . Acually looking at V7 its actually set up to '_   as default. If you start an operation my feeling is that if you pick an esnap you are more likely to want it a number of times than the other way around.

This WAS one of many little things that still keeps us running V7 in production here.

About grid I dont see the use for a grid without a snap but as you say a snap doesn't nessecarily have to have a grid. I'm wondering why ýou don't make them cooperate so that the grid is a visual indication of that the snap is on. Then you wouldn't miss it.

John Gaunt

Perhaps because I use the cursor snap menu for temporary esnaps I never noticed a change, but I use multiple esnaps and would only ever want an override for one pick.

I am happy enough with snap as it is and never want to use the grid, but I know why some would want the facility to have a constant snap setting and that some like the 'graph paper' effect.

If I did much schematic type work I might too.

Tablets: I wonder who still does use them. Wacoms still sell, but aren't as good as the tablet I reluctantly handed in because my arm got too sore driving a puck or stylus.

I always felt many didn't know what they were missing, and still don't because the majority of pointing devices are not very accurate.

martin@enco.us

I use two toolbars for esnaps.  The top toolbar uses code similar to
[code]'_setvar;osmode 1;'_redraw[/code]
for each button. The examples here are for the endpoint esnap.  The bottom toolbar uses
[code]_endpoint[/code]
which is the Bricscad standard command.  The bottom button also has the Diesel macro set to
[code]$(if,$(=,$(and,$(getvar,OSMODE),0x0001),0),,!.)[/code]
which gives a visual indication of which esnaps are set.  The toolbars have the buttons for each esnap type aligned one above the other.  This gives me a top toolbar that will set one esnap as active, even during a command, and a bottom toolbar that lets me do a one-time override of esnaps it I'm in a command, or that allows setting mulitiple esnaps it I'm not in a command. 

martin@enco.us

I use two toolbars for esnaps.  The top toolbar uses code similar to
[code]'_setvar;osmode 1;'_redraw[/code]
for each button. The examples here are for the endpoint esnap.  The bottom toolbar uses
[code]_endpoint[/code]
which is the Bricscad standard command.  The bottom button also has the Diesel macro set to
[code]$(if,$(=,$(and,$(getvar,OSMODE),0x0001),0),,!.)[/code]
which gives a visual indication of which esnaps are set.  The toolbars have the buttons for each esnap type aligned one above the other.  This gives me a top toolbar that will set one esnap as active, even during a command, and a bottom toolbar that lets me do a one-time override of esnaps it I'm in a command, or that allows setting mulitiple esnaps it I'm not in a command. 

Doug Wright

Getting back to the OPs question. In AutoCad LT 2012 or maybe before, they reintroduced the SNAP ON always, even when not in a command feature. It is a SYSTEM VARIABLE - "SNAPGRIDLEGACY".

Maybe it is an old guy thing but I would also like to see this option in BricsCad. It gives me the option of seeing if things are inserted on snap without going to a command.

Thanks,

DRW

William Bishop

Thanks for the comment Doug. I started this thread and was soon shot down by some who who were critical of the usefulness of this feature. An "always on" snap is very helpful (to some at least) and I was simply asking for ideas on how to implement the function. Apparently there is no way to do this which answers my question.

Hans-Peter Baumeister

Too bad the BricsCAD here to AutoCAD

is not 100 % compatible.

I'm writing a small VBA - function,

  which will be called via a function key,

  automatically invokes a any one command(linie or others) ,

since by I have a "ALLWAYS SNAP"

William Bishop

Hans-Peter,

Do you know of a way to activate cursor snap mode independently of command status?
That is, to be able to have the cursor snap even when there is no active command?

Thanks,
Bill

Hans-Peter Baumeister

 Sorry,

without command will not do.

I've just added a VBA tool to a function key

That's enough for me !

Public Sub roba_Snap ()

If ThisDrawing.GetVariable ("SNAPMODE") = 0 Then

       Call ThisDrawing.SetVariable ("SNAPMODE", 1)

       Call ThisDrawing.SendCommand ("_ Line")

   else

      Call ThisDrawing.SendCommand ("(quit)")

      Call ThisDrawing.SetVariable ("SNAPMODE", 0)

End If

End Sub

William Bishop

Thanks, but VBA is not available in the 64-bit version!
Is there another way, like a LISP routine?

mzarchtech

@Patrik Sparrman said:
Excuse a stupid question, but whats the use for this?? If you set the object-snaps without an active action they will be there as soon as you start drawing or measuring or whatever you want to do and they will stay on. If no action is active whats the use for playing around with a snapping mouse ??

It's very useful as a constant check if things are drawn accurately. For example, if you draw/dimension your plans with 5mm resolution, all objects should be located "on the grid" at 5mm. As you move your cursor over the geometry, you will see immediately any deviation. A visual grid at 5mm can also be used for this, but it's easy to miss small errors unless you are quite zoomed in. With the cursor snapping, the cursor's lines either coincide with the geometry or not, so it's very clear without having to zoom in excessively.

Anyways, just bumping the thread because the SNAPGRIDLEGACY variable is something I would like to see in BricsCAD.

Michael Mayer

^ 100% agree

Chili

Interesting enough.. I can't get any snapping at all! turned on snap mode. Anyone else experience this?

Roy Klein Gebbinck

@Chili Maybe your zoom factor is such that you do not notice that snapping in fact occurs?

Chili

Doesn't seem that way... Went over my snap settings several times not sure what exactly I'm not doing to get snap to work..

Chili

Found the issue in options under Drawings->Coordinate Input->Snap/Grid->Snap Type... It seems by default BricsCAD has Adaptive Grid on, changed to Grid snap and its snapping correctly... That brings the question, what is Adaptive Grid snap for?

Michael Mayer

Adaptive Grid is absolutely great.
It prevents you from any arbitrary coordinate numbers when
drawing "free hand" and in most cases you don't even need any
numeric input anymore.
With suitable Adaptive Grid tolerance Setting, I use a more coarse
10 instead of default 3, and suitable zoom factor in view, you can
move your cursor in "about" the direction and just click.

But I also see that Adaptive Grid has snapping priority over Entity Snaps
and makes it really really hard or nearly impossible to snap to entities.
So there is an important need to be able to stop Adaptive Grid at least
temporarily. And the need to go to settings is no option.

a) There needs to be a new "AGS" button in Status Bar
b) A Shortcut for disabling temporarily
c) Icons in Snapping Panels