Transparent snaps

[MGreisen]

I'm having a problem with a set of drawings where running snaps would crash the drawing. I spoke a colleague who told me that it is a well known bug in ACAD that running snaps can cause conflicts in drawings and should never used. (I was surprised to hear this as I've been using them for years and never had a problem)
Anyway, I've stopped using them and the problem's gone away, but I was wondering if there's a way of shortcutting the transparent typed entry i.e. instead of typing end I'd like to type e, or m for mid, p for perp etc.
I'm aware of the desktop menu but find it clumsy.

Many thanks

Mike

 

[J. Logan]

Don't know if this is an adequate solution to your issue. I've chosen to
create a button macro that turns my preferred snaps on and off when I hit
it.

'osnap;ins,midpoint,end;

Originally I had a lisp routine that would turn them off. So I needed a way
to quickly and transparently turn them on in the middle of the routine.

J.

I'm having a problem with a set of drawings where running snaps would

crash the drawing. I spoke a colleague who told me that it is a well known
bug in ACAD that running snaps can cause conflicts in drawings and should
never used. (I was surprised to hear this as I've been using them for years
and never had a problem)

Anyway, I've stopped using them and the problem's gone away, but I was

wondering if there's a way of shortcutting the transparent typed entry i.e.
instead of typing end I'd like to type e, or m for mid, p for perp etc.

 

[Kent Elrod]

I haven't ever heard of the running osnaps being a problem, although I
rarely have running osnaps on.

I have my F keys set for the most common snaps I need, set in a menu file.
I can usually grab the osnap needed without looking at the key board since
the fkeys are separated the way they are.

It looks like this in the menu....

***ACCELERATORS
ID_OsnapEndp [INTERNAL+"F1"]
ID_OsnapPerp [INTERNAL+"F2"]
ID_OsnapNear [INTERNAL+"F3"]
ID_OsnapMidp [INTERNAL+"F4"]
ID_OsnapQuad [INTERNAL+"F5"]
ID_OsnapCent [INTERNAL+"F6"]
ID_OsnapInte [INTERNAL+"F7"]
ID_OsnapNode [INTERNAL+"F11"]
ID_OsnapInse [INTERNAL+"F12"]

Kent Elrod

I'm having a problem with a set of drawings where running snaps would

crash the drawing. I spoke a colleague who told me that it is a well known
bug in ACAD that running snaps can cause conflicts in drawings and should
never used. (I was surprised to hear this as I've been using them for years
and never had a problem)

Anyway, I've stopped using them and the problem's gone away, but I was

wondering if there's a way of shortcutting the transparent typed entry i.e.
instead of typing end I'd like to type e, or m for mid, p for perp etc.

 

[Tom Smith]

I believe your colleague is misinformed. You should trust your own
experience of using running osnaps for years without problems, rather than a
vague and unsubstantiated rumor.

There was an obscure and intermittent bug in R14, in which you MIGHT get an
Unhandled Access Violation crash, sometimes, if you had a running
Intersection osnap, and you moved your cursor over the intersection of a
line and an xline, and the line had a non-zero thickness. I haven't noticed
this in later versions, but you may be experiencing something similar. It's
almost certainly not the osnaps alone, but a combination of other factors,
and probably only one of the osnap settings that's involved. The fact that
it is limited to one set of drawings is your clue that something about the
drawing environment figures into it. Running osnaps in and of themselves are
not something that you need to avoid.

As far as different interfaces for osnap overrides, there have been many
posts here on different people's ways of doing this. All of them have pros
and cons.

I use the shift-right-click method, and simply hit the hot key -- for
instance E for endpoint -- rather than using the mouse to pick the osnap.
This is so fast ! never even see the menu pop up. In past versions I
assigned the osnap menu to plain right-click, which I really prefer, but I
changed habits when more functionality was added to the right button.

I would focus on finding and fixing the issues in the problem drawings,
rather than eliminating the use of running osnaps. I've got a couple dozen
users who always run them, and we don't have problems.

 

[R.K. McSwain]

I believe your colleague is misinformed. You should trust your own
experience of using running osnaps for years without problems, rather than a
vague and unsubstantiated rumor.

Well said.

 

[OLD-CADaver]

It's not a problem with most drawings, but there are some issues with files that contain large xref's and running osnaps where ALL the boxes are checked. It may cause a slow down when attempting display the osnap marker as it scans the entire xref for all possibilities for the running osnap setting. Setting GRIPBLOCK to 0 seems to help some, but reducing the running osnaps to those you're really going to use is the better answer.

Now to your question about transparent osnaps, in addition to the function keys already discussed. I use the POP0 menu in conjunction with the keyboard. Look at the POP0 portion of your MNS/MNU file and notice the ampersand (&) in some of the menu title areas.

***POP0
**SNAP
[&Object Snap Cursor Menu]
ID_Tracking [Temporary trac&k point]_tt
ID_From [&From]_from
ID_MnPointFi [->Poin&t Filters]
ID_PointFilx [.X].X
ID_PointFily [.Y].Y
ID_PointFilz [.Z].Z
[--]
ID_PointFixy [.XY].XY
ID_PointFixz [.XZ].XZ
ID_PointFiyz [<-.YZ].YZ
[--]
ID_OsnapEndp [&Endpoint]_endp
ID_OsnapMidp [&Midpoint]_mid
ID_OsnapInte [&Intersection]_int
ID_OsnapAppa [&Apparent Intersect]_appint
ID_OsnapExte [E&xtension]_ext
[--]
ID_OsnapCent [&Center]_cen
ID_OsnapQuad [&Quadrant]_qua
ID_OsnapTang [Tan&gent]_tan
[--]
ID_OsnapPerp [&Perpendicular]_per
ID_OsnapPara [Para&llel]_par
ID_OsnapNode [No&de]_nod
ID_OsnapInse [In&sert]_ins
ID_OsnapNear [Nea&rest]_nea
ID_OsnapNone [&None]_non


The letter following that is a hotkey when that menu is activated. In the above example a middle button pops POP0, followed by an E at the keyboard is an ENDPoint osnap.

I've set F12 to toggle MBUTTONPAN on and off.