2D esnap question

HI all. I have a question about esnaps. Bricscad V16 seems to like to default to perpendicular or midpoint snaps. This gets a little irritating because I normally need intersection and endpoint snaps, though I use midpoint and perpendicular enough that I don't was to turn them off. Is there a way to change the esnap "hierarchy", for lack of a better term, so that I can choose which I would prefer it to try first? Thanks in advance for any help.

Comments

  • No way that I know of to alter the snap priority. However, when you want a particular snap and don't want to be bothered by neighboring snap points just do a Shift+Right Mouse Button and select the one snap to be active for that current action. I usually leave Perpendicular turned off and access it via the Shift+RMB only when needed.

  • You can use the TAB key to cycle through close by snap points, when you are trying to pick a particular snap TAB will cycle through and highlight the geometry as well as name the snap type so you can see that the 'intersection' is actually between the circle and the line or the circle and the rectangle.

  • Michael Mayer
    edited March 2018

    ^ Didn't know this. Great !

    I also had problems with snapping priorities. So I rechecked and when watching
    I thought it had improved now. But for me it is really terrible !

    ORTHO/SHIFT
    When in non ORTHO and you press SHIFT to Lock the Axis,
    it"looks" ok, Line is straight, DYNDIM says 90°/0°
    but when you click it changes and snaps to an Entity Corner near instead.
    (ORTHO gets ignored too of course)
    That even prevents from drawing precisely.

    GRID
    I do get no red snapping hint or sticky cursor for Grid snap,
    it appears only for Entities.
    So I have to zoom in more to make sure I get the right grid point when
    I start drawing my rectangle. At least after that first input my rubber band
    geometry will stick to give some visual feedback.
    Also Entity Snap has priority again.

    I think, beside Selection, as soon as any drawing tool is active,
    there should always appear any red hint when there is any possible
    snapping point according to snap settings, inside given snapping radius.

  • @Michael Mayer:
    If you have SNAP switched on you should get a 'jumpy' cursor whenever you create an entity. The effect of course depends on the zoom factor.

  • I'm on Mac.

    With SNAP I get anything jumpy only AFTER I started drawing.

    Elsewhere, when my View is zoomed out so the cursor is positioned
    somewhere between the grid points, a red thing jumps to the nearest
    grid point. So I can recognize that it may be the wrong grid point and
    reposition my cursor a little.
    In Bricscad I would have to zoom further in to be sure I get the right point.

    Maybe I'm just using it wrong.
    Is there any way to safely lock to a specific axis ?

  • Snapping indeed only occurs when a command is active. Maybe you should try to make the grid less dense? E.g. Grid=200mm and SNAP=50mm.

    Have you tried using POLAR mode? In a way it is the modern replacement for ORTHO.

  • I tried Polar.
    Everything looks fine - until I click and it snaps to the nearest entity.
    (Show stopper !)

    I mean, if you have a simple drawing and enough space between elements,
    you can work well with Tracking Lines or even by ORTHO/SHIFT.
    But who has such models ?
    I need an absolut ORTHO mode that doesn't allow any Element be created
    or rotated at any angle other than n*90°

  • @Steven_g said:
    You can use the TAB key to cycle through close by snap points, when you are trying to pick a particular snap TAB will cycle through and highlight the geometry as well as name the snap type so you can see that the 'intersection' is actually between the circle and the line or the circle and the rectangle.

    Also, if you only have a single eSNAP type set, you can use TAB to toggle between options on the same entity. Suppose you have a line and you want to snap to the endpoint, but the endpoint is buried along with several other endpoints from other entities. You can eSnap to the other (presumably free) endpoint, then press TAB to have it toggle to the other endpoint of the same entity.

    I wrote about this for autocad years ago. Glad to see it works in BCAD too. http://cadpanacea.com/wp/?p=110

  • @rkmcswain said:
    You can eSnap to the other (presumably free) endpoint, then press TAB to have it toggle to the other endpoint of the same entity.

    That's interesting !

    But as a Mac user the same TAB experience as usual,
    the slightest cursor movement and your TAB cycle starts
    from the beginning again.

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    edited March 2018

    I have PER assigned to a function key. I use it a lot, but that takes care of it very nicely. The only other time I have to do anything about esnaps is when I want NOD only, and that doesn't happen very often (only after using the Divide command). For that, I have -Osnap NOD assigned to a combination key, and another combination key that changes back to my standard esnaps (INT, END, MID, CEN, QUA, NEA, NOD). I don't use the Tab key or the right-click esnap overrides.

  • @Anthony Apostolaros said:
    I have PER assigned to a function key. That takes care of it very nicely. The only other time I have to do anything about esnaps is when I want NOD only, and that doesn't happen very often (only after using the Divide command). For that, I have NOD assigned to a combination key, and another combination key that changes back to my standard esnaps (INT, END, MID, CEN, QUA, NEA, NOD). I don't use the Tab key or the right-click esnap overrides.

    PER?

  • PER-pendicular ?

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    edited March 2018

    You can override esnap settings by typing the first 3 letters of the esnap you want (when prompted for a point), followed by enter. If you want more than one, separate them with commas and no spaces. Or you can set running esnaps by typing -osnap before that. At one time that was the only way to do either of those things. But for anything that I type at all often I assign a keyboard shortcut.

  • Also be aware that you can change te behavior of Esnap by adding a ' in front of the command.
    Right-click the icons choose customize at the bottom. Go to toolbars/entity snap . If you change command to for example '_endpoint this snap will be on until you turn it off . Normally this happens only if you choose the snap before the command now it will also stick within the command.

  • I also have seen a certain dynamic in snap setting behavior but
    don't quite get the rules. like when deactivating a certain snap,
    had to do an undo and it was activated again.

    Are snap settings changes somehow applied to the current command only ?

    Does changing snap in Settings does the same as changing in Snap Panel ?
    (When no Tool was active ?)

  • If you apply snaps before choosing the command they stick , but if you choose command first the snap they only apply once.
    Unless you add the '

  • Thanks for clarification.

  • Joe Dunfee
    edited April 2018

    In general, I deal with having multiple running-osnaps by simply moving my cursor closer to the target point that I want. The point that is closest to your aperture center is the one that "wins". Sometimes I use the override ' method, if my target point has a lot of competing points near by. I also normally only have the end-point active. But, those choices will vary greatly depending on what type of work the user does.

    Another factor is the size of your aperture. A larger aperture can have more targets in its sight, though, you can counter that by zooming in more.

    I was not clear if the original poster was wanting to use the grid snapping, along side a running osnap. If so, you will probably get into fights between them. Since your cursor will be snapping to the grid, it may not be possible to actually get to the object you want, unless you are zoomed out enough that the aperture can "see" it. But, then you may run into the issue of too many targets in your aperture.

    -Joe

  • @Joe Dunfee said:
    In general, I deal with having multiple running-osnaps by simply moving my cursor closer to the target point that I want. The point that is closest to your aperture center is the one that "wins".
    -Joe

    That is how I worked in the past.
    Hover over (multiple) Snap Points, watch the cursor indicator and reposition
    until the wanted snap is nearest to cursor center and accept.
    But that doesn't work for me in Bricscad (Mac!?)

    Like when using the tracing helper lines to get a Snap from crossing
    of 2 Entity Snaps. That calculated Snap Point will only appear when that
    near Entity Snap is out of reach of the Snap Aperture Area.
    Which means I have to Zoom In, much deeper than I was used to or I want to.

    I tried minimizing Snap Aperture Setting to 2 or 4.
    But that makes it far too likely to accidentally lose an Entity Snap Point.

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    edited April 2018

    With a simple custom command you can combine the osnap setting and the osnap override. I said above that I have PER assigned to a function key, but what's actually assigned to the key is 'aOsnap PER. The single quote makes it work even if a command is in progress. The aOsnap command does nothing if a command is in progress (so in that case it's an override, equivalent to 'PER), but if no command is in progress it invokes the Osnap command (so then it's an osnap setting, equivalent to '-Osnap PER).

    And it's not really assigned to a function key. I don't need them very often, so my osnap commands are assigned to combination keys:
    alt-X = 'aOsnap PER
    alt-D = 'aOsnap NOD
    alt-S = 'aOsnap INT,ENDp,MID,CEN,QUA,NEA,NOD

    I move the mouse with my left hand and operate the keyboard and numeric keypad with my right hand. If I were using my left hand for those combination keys I'd probably use Z, A, and S.

    (defun c:aOsnap () (if (= (getvar "cmdactive") 0 ) (command "-Osnap") ) )

  • I found Perp to override too often.
    Recently added Near to the list of premanently set osnaps.
    Now any relevant osnap works only within the aperture (or else you get 'Near'), but I like that better than having to cycle out of Perp all the time.

  • @Roy Klein Gebbinck said:

    Have you tried using POLAR mode? In a way it is the modern replacement for ORTHO.

    I tried again.
    Now POLAR works for me. SHIFT Lock is reliable in V18.2 for me now.
    (But opposed to ORTHO, I have to lock by SHIFT every time)

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    edited July 2018

    @Michael Mayer said:
    I need an absolut ORTHO mode that doesn't allow any Element be created
    or rotated at any angle other than n*90°

    You could draw everything with Rectang. That's what I do.

    With Line or Pline there's always a chance that you'll inadvertently snap to something and make a line or polyline segment that's slightly off of orthographic. But no matter what you do, Rectang refuses to draw a line that's not square with the world.

    I draw rectangles on the Defpoints layer. Defpoints is always my active layer. Usually I'm snapping to points that I want to connect orthographically; but I also have a custom command for drawing a rectangle by dimensions. Then when I've got enough rectangles to define the geometry I need, I use -Boundary to create the polyline I really want, or sometimes I select all the rectangles and use the Trim command (and then my custom Join command makes everything that's left into a polyline), or I trace the shape with Pline.

    Any of those procedures ends with the target polyline selected (because of my custom commands), so then I use my VectorWorks-style eyedropper command to give it the appropriate layer, color, linetype, and lineweight. I also have custom commands that assign color and lineweight, because it's not always easy to find an eyedropper target that has all the correct properties. My "1" command makes the selection red and .09 mm, "2" makes it yellow and .15 mm, etc.

    Then I select the whole area with a crossing, filter it for the current layer (Defpoints) using my "QLL" command, and delete all the construction lines.

    I never have Ortho or Polar on. They're a nuisance most of the time. The only time I ever want Ortho is when I'm mirroring or flipping something. And then I almost always want Ortho on; so my custom mirror and flip commands always draw an orthographic mirror line (except when snap points or the shift key override it).

    If you're interested, I'll post the custom commands that do all that.

  • Michael Mayer
    edited June 2018

    So far it looks like POLAR + SHIFT Lock doesn't jump to a near
    unwanted entity snap but keep locking.
    I think with the rectangle I would have the same problem, missing
    the grid snap because of an entity snap. Or partly manual numeric
    input needed.

    The other way I found in ORTHO was to play with the cursor until you
    find the hint, that looks like a Y or T on his head, which gives some thing
    like a perpendicular snap.

    But honestly what I would like to have is Microstation behavior.
    ENTER to look both other Axes, beside the one you cursor direction
    points most, then you can snap wherever in 3D space you want and
    can be totally sure that you will move in that special Axis only.

  • @Michael Mayer:
    You can mimic this behavior with 3 toolbar macros linked to keyboard shortcuts.
    The 'only X-axis' macro would look like this:
    .yz;@;

  • Thanks for the very interesting comments.
    So there are options to customize snapping.
    Or getting used to a different workflow.

    I started CAD purely in 3D so didn't ever bother much with 2D or 2D Tools.
    So I forgot that you could user faster and more reliable 2D workflow also
    to later create Walls by Poligons* or at least use it as guides.
    (* OK, one by one for Polysolid only in Bricscad)
    So Rectangles is a good idea.

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