Seeking a utility that will cause BricsCAD to Beep when it does not find an entity snap

Joe Dunfee

 Occasionally, when using an entity snap, I apparently click far enough away, that I don't get the snap.  I realize that I can increase the aperture size, but my drawing has enough detail, that I keep the aperture relatively small to avoid selecting unwanted entities.

AutoCAD (at least years ago) used to beep when you typed an entity snap, but didn't actually obtain one when you clicked.  Since BricsCAD does not have a beep-on-error function, I was hoping there would be a utility to do this.

Also, since I use running snaps much of the time, I would like to have a Beep when ever I have a running snap that fails to find its target.  This not an error, from the CAD program's view, and AutoCAD would not beep in that circumstance.  So, even if Beep-on-error were enabled, AutoCAD would not beep.

Has anyone ever heard of such a utility program?  I wonder if it is even possible to make such a program, since running snaps are so integrated into the CAD program.

-Joe

Bruce Fillmore

Joe,

Not sure that running osnap beep would work as you explained, I believe you would hear a steady beep until it found a target then it would stop....how to determine if no target was found as opposed to searching for a target. 

Joe Dunfee

Since I typically only have Endpoint as my running object snap, it might be viable to make a program that automatically initiates an osnap override any time  BricsCAD prompts for a point.  The program could allow the user to set one running object snap.

Then the Beep-on-error function would sound its beep if a snap was not found when the user clicked anywhere. But, since the Beep-on-error is not available in BricsCAD, the program would have to somehow monitor if the error were reported so it could initiate the sound itself.

I have some very limited LISP programming abilities, and have no idea if what I am proposing can be done in LISP.  Anyone know if it is possible?  Can it be done with VBA?

-Joe

Roy Klein Gebbinck

What you are suggesting *should* theoretically be possible in Lisp.
Basically whenever you select a point, the LASTPOINT system variable is updated. And you can create a reactor that responds to changes in system variables. Inside the reactor callback you can then check for a correct entity snap with the (osnap ...) function. And there is also a beep function.

But in practice (in V14) this does not work.
The reactor fires for LASTPOINT changes when you enter this in the command window:
(setvar 'lastpoint '(0 0 0))
But the reactor does not fire for points selected during, for example, the _LINE command. Although the LASTPOINT variable does change.