Has SOLview/SOLdraw changed in AutoCAD 2015

[kadis1967]

Hello all,

Just upgraded to AutoCAD 2015 (part of Factory Design Suite Premium 2015) and I've noticed a strange thing happening with my legacy drawings that use the section option from the SOLview command.

If you open the attached DWG you should see 3 views, a plan view, a sectional elevation and a 3D view.  This was created in 2014. (the Attached PDF also shows the same).

If you open the drawing in AutoCAD 2015 and run SOLdraw on the 2 orthographic viewports you should see both views change dramatically, for the worse.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Thanks for your valued time.

[JDMather]

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@kadis1967 wrote:

Hello all,

Just upgraded to AutoCAD 2015 ....  This was created in 2014. ...

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Just to be sure - are you aware of the new viewbase command?

[kadis1967]

I'd always thought this command was linked to Inventor which I do not use.

Reading up on it this does look a better solution to my old freinds SOLview and SOLdraw but I assume the bug I have encountered in 2015 is not connected to VIEWBASE.

Just out of interest, were you able to replicate my problem?

[GrantsPirate]

2014 handles it properly, 2015 does not.  There are so many problems with 2015 that 2014 is my production software.  2015 is making the old release 13 look good by comparison.

[kadis1967]

Thanks for the response, I've escalated the problem via Subs Tech support, will post what they come back with.  Just wanted to know if it was isolated to my set-up or if others could replicate the issue.

Don't currently have 2014 on my main workstation as it was re-built 2 weeks ago without it, will have to grovel to IT manager now to get it installed:-(

I remember R13, coming after the excellent R12 it was, indeed, a major let down, fortunatey R14 was a lot better, perhaps AutoCAD does not like odd numbers??

[kadis1967 · Accepted solution]

Had a response from Autodesk: -

"I understand that in AutoCAD 2015 the SOLVIEW and SOLDRAW commands are generating different results than previous versions of AutoCAD. The resulting section only shows a partial area of the full 3D solid, and hatch is missing or misplaced.

I was able to reproduce this behavior on the file you sent as well as a new drawing. I will coordinate with my extended team to research this further. In the meantime, I would suggest using the newer commands VIEWBASE, SECTIONPLANE, and FLATSHOT. These commands have been in AutoCAD for some time, and offer some improved capabilities over the older SOLVIEW"

Thanks to JDMather I have now seen the light with respect to VIEWBASE, it's a very powerfull set of commands that looks a lot like the way Inventor/Solidworks creates orthographic and other projections.  Unfortinately I've been using SOLview for over a decade and have thousands of legacy drawings that use it, hundreds of which have sectional elevations that wouyld be screwed up in 2015.  Hopefully Autodesk can resolve the bug.

[robtdeeks]

"Changed", no, no, it just doesn't work.  I have a college proect I've done for years and now we've hit this problem.  Auxiliary views are not aligned orthographically, and the software seems to switch automatically, from Polar to Ortho and aligns the auxiliary views horizontally, totally ignoring the projecting plane.

VIEWBASE looks to be half the tool that's provided in Inventor, there is no way to change the visiblity of excess hidden lines, it show them all.

I notice a few posting, but there doesn't seem to be a solution posted, I have 80 students at a standstill. (and the problem isn't really selling AutoCAD).  They're trying to follow tutorials I did last year using 2014.

Also, is there a list page that translates what I have loaded - VERNUM = "J.141.0.0 (UNICODE)"  I see a service pack 2, should I load it?

[TimSkene4428]

I also teach AutoCAD 3D modeling, and am frustrated by the problems in 2015, even after 2 service packs. Drawing views are good, but solview/soldraw has some advantages in making 2d views of solids. I make sure my students know them well ( up to 2014 at least...). Maybe 2016 will restore proper functioning.

[RTPrider]

Paperspace viewports work fairly well with Visual Styles, once you get the hang of them.  Hidden lines (occluded edges) need to be set for medium dash font.  Look at the ISO linetypes for examples.  They will NOT look the right scale in the plot preview, you just have to try different ones to find what works best for the scales you work with.  The other gotcha is that leaving things to entity colors ends up as different shades of greyscale on a "monochrome" print.  Sometimes I have had to change everything to white colors temporarily to get decent prints.  You also need to make sure your printer is set to MERGE lines instead of overwrite so you are less likely to get a hidden line on top of a continuous line.

Give it a try and play around with it some.  It took me a while t oget decent results.  I still wish they would get solid black linework out of it consistently.