Problem with drawing on UCS in ACAD 2015

[lovecraft]

O.K.  Been running 2015 for a week or so now.  My experience has been mixed.  I like the way Mtext has been improved and I've played around a bit with some of the other selection "enhancements" and some things I like and others will just not use.  Yesterday I ran into a snag that, if not fixed, will cause me some grief and frustration until I find a workaround.  For quite a few years now I've been working with 3D solid modeling and when I create new geometry, be it 2D construction aids or actual solids themselves, my methods involve a lot of moving, rotating and otherwise re-orienting the UCS to facilitate my workflow.  Much to my surprise, yesterday, when starting from the WCS, then moving it to a new location slightly above that plane and rotating the new UCS 90 degrees CCW around the X axis (in effect establishing a work plane parallel to and, in fact co-planar to the WCS Orthographic Front plane), I found that when drawing a new line on this plane, then starting another line originating at one end of that first line, that the start point of the second line was (believe it or not) forced back down onto what seemed to be the WCS and that no matter how I dragged my mouse (more on that in a minute) the second line was constrained to a plane below where I was trying to draw (apparently on the WCS) 90 degrees out of plane with the UCS that I had just established and was trying to draw upon.

Now, I've been racking my admittedly feeble brain trying to explain this shocking and unexpected behavior, since it will, if not overcome, seriously and deleteriously affect my workflow and productivity.

Some of the things I've considered as an explanation and rejected when modifying them had no effect:

Accidentally hitting F7, F9 or F11 keys which would activate snap, grid or tracking modes.

Video card driver.  Autodesk seems to be telling me it's up to date.  By the way, I notice that 3DCONFIG has been retired and has now been replaced with GRAPHICSCONFIG.  I notice that there's no way now in preferences to manually check if this is up-to-snuff, that we just have to rely on the software periodically checking to see that all is well----hope this works as promised.

The next thing I plan on looking into is the mouse, which is an older Microsoft Trackball, something I swore a few years ago I would never use but has actually worked out really well for 3D work, as you can assign orbit commands and the like to one of the additional buttons provided.  However, I guess I need to check to see whether I can update the mouse driver to work better with ACAD 2015----there were NO ISSUES with 2014.

I also tried to audit and recover the file (no help there, and besides, I tried the same frustrating exercise in another known-to-be-uncorrupted file and experienced the same disappointing behavior).

Could the explanation be (just a theory, mind you) that Autodesk is now forcing us to use these Dynamic UCS's that, I guess, were originally created to eliminate the need to move, rotate & otherwise re-orient our co-ordinate systems to facilitate creating geometry in 3D space?  I hope someone out there has an answer for this.  My preference would be to stick with my established and very effective method of controlling my UCS, but if I have to adopt a new methodology I would like to know as soon as possible.

Can anyone in the forum point me in the right direction to take care of this problem? 

[darawork]

Do you rotate the UCS manually via the command line or do you leave dynamic UCS on?

I tried dynamic UCS for all of about 30seconds when I installed 2015 last week.

At first I was all like 'oooh cool', then it turned to me being all like 'omfgwtff?'.

Then I went back to my traditional way of typing; ucs;x;;y;;

I did also notice once when drawing a lasso selection in 3D that, after the initial click and hold, the lasso flew off and stuck to the side of the screen... which would have been the rotated UCS z-plane zero level or somewhere close to that. I reverted to plan view, then back to 3D view and it worked again.

[lovecraft]

Thanks for noticing my post and replying.  Yeah, what I do is the same as manually spinning the axes around, but I've automated that a bit with Lisp to speed up the process, with a simple command-based macro that has worked flawlessly for years and years.  This is annoying enough that I think I'm going to have to revert back to 2014.  I tried a simple repair to my 2015 installation, looked to see if my display driver and mouse driver were up to date, all to no avail so far.  This all caught me totally by surprise yesterday afternoon, cause I'd been doing nothing but 2D work during the week and a half that I've been previewing 2015.  What a letdown!  Again, thanks for your input.  Good luck with your experience in the days and months ahead.

LC

[darawork]

That problem with the lasso still happens. You can see in the screenshot below.

It's actually good for drawing temporary Batman call searchlights, not much else though.

[lovecraft]

All right.  I'm up and running again with 2014 and all is well.  The aforementioned issue from my initial post appears to be a glitch and a pretty serious one for those of us manually manipulating the UCS to generate any kind of geometry, be it 2D or 3D.  Beware.

[Anonymous]

I posted a message yesterday on the exact same problem (unfortunately no replies) on how the "line" is "stuck" on the WCS until  you click an endpoint, then the line does show correctly (I attached a video in my post showing the glitch).  However, after some testing, I did find that ONLY the "line" seems to be affected - circles, arcs, rectangles, etc all work correctly.  Like you, I feel this is a terrible glitch which will probably have me going back to 2014 and waiting for 2016.

[lovecraft]

I filed a case with Autodesk regarding this, considering its impact on many of us.

LC

[darawork]

Could you take a screenshot of the problem, from such an angle as to make sense of what is happening?

Picturesque language is the essence of eloquence, but a picture paints..etc...

And we are in the industry of visual expression afterall. 🙂

[lovecraft]

Would you believe that now I cannot reproduce the former behavior?  What happens now is that the line is correctly drawn but no visual feedback is provided while it is being drawn.  Nothing but black background in the space where the line is being generated.  Hmmmmm.

Like the comment earlier about the caped crusader lassoo alert.  I'm sure my company would be impressed with that performance.....as in, what else can this application do for the money we laid down for it?

[Anonymous]

Lovecraft: Try zooming out 🙂 My (visual feedback) always appears well below the part.

Darawork: As I have said, I actually did a movie file showing the glitch in my post yesterday if you want to see it Yorx57 post

[lovecraft]

Well, I'm encouraged to see that you're getting some visual feedback, but you do agree that what you're getting is unacceptable, don't you?  I'm sticking to 2014 for now and as mentioned in a previous post, I have filed a service request with Autodesk.  I want, if that's not asking too much, someone somewhere (preferably those writing/mangling the code for 2015) to take a look "under the hood" and fix this absurd behavior.  If they can't do this, I guess I'll be with 2014 until hell freezes over.

LC

[Anonymous]

I'm pretty sure you are getting the visual feedback also - you just need to zoom out - it'll be underneath the part and way over to one side or the other.

However - the feedback is NOT correct as you know - it's like the feedback line is "stuck" on the WCS - and yes, definitely NOT acceptable.  I honestly don't even know how 2015 could have been released like this - there's also an issue with the lasso on a rotated plane as you know.  How these issues  where never picked up in testing is beyond me - I guess the programmers just stayed in 2D with big grins on their face patting each other on the back looking at all of the "new" flashy crap that was added and actually NEVER TESTED the program!!

Another thing that has me really annoyed is there is another post about how ctrl-click and drag on a base view to copy it doesn't work anymore. It was posted as a "missing feature", not even as a "bug" or "problem". There's a response in there from an AutoDesk employee who was all over it and how they do montior these forums to help track and fix bugs! Here is a MAJOR flaw!! I wouldn't consider this a "bug" or a "glitch" - this is a MAJOR screw up!! And yet.... absolutely NOTHING from AutoDesk, no response posts - NOTHING!!! I bet if you posted that you would like to see your part explode into pieces when you zoom out - they would be all over that and responding how they have sent that request to the "team" for the next release!! 

[lovecraft]

I did try zooming way out and you're right, I can see my geometry being drawn in real time but, as you have remarked, nowhere near where the cursor is.  Guess you saw my post about how I can no longer re-create the original behavior and now I am seeing what I've just described and what you have apparently experienced from the get-go.  Oh well, as I've said, I've filed a service request with Autodesk because I've been advised many times by previous posters in this forum, that's the only way to have a fighting chance of being noticed.

LC

[Steve_Bessette]

Some options to test are to update the graphics card driver to the latest version certified by Autodesk (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112).  If your graphics card is not listed, then update the driver to the latest version from the manufacturer.  In addtion, you may want to reset the program to its default settings.  Please refer to the following link for instructions (http://knowledge.autodesk.com/article/How-to-reset-AutoCAD-to-defaults).

Regards,

[lovecraft]

Greetings to you, Stephen, and the other posters.  I tried to send you an e-mail with the zip file that stored all my custom settings, but I think it was too large (13 MB) to be sent using my company's ISP.  Then I sent you another message explaining this, but haven't heard back from you yet, so maybe you'll see this commentary in the forum.

All of this is very frustrating to me.  Approximately 12 years ago, I developed a few simple Lisp-generated macros, frankly because of AutoCAD's limitations.  Specifically, what they allowed me to do was to snap instantly to an isometric view--SE, SW, NE or NW--rather than wade through either dialogue boxes or command line options and having to enter the return key multiple times just to get me where I wanted to be.  So, this morning I decided to do a simple test.  What's been happening since trying out 2015, as you know, Stephen, and you other posters, is that, when I issue a simple line command starting at the origin of any UCS that is located anywhere other than the WCS origin (no matter whether you issue the PLAN command to view your line generation head-on or not) you see no geometry being generated.  So, you only get visual feedback at the WCS origin.  Here, you can see the line being generated from any viewpoint, so the behavior doesn't change no matter what you do to manipulate your UCS, i.e. rotating about any axis, for instance.

So I tried an experiment.  I was wondering if my Lisp macros were having any effect and were somehow causing ACAD to stumble when trying to display my line generation, so instead of running my macros to snap to a SE, SW, NE or NW viewpoint, I instead went through the standard routine of issuing the VIEW command, clicking on SE to set up my viewpoint, O.K. and out, and then proceeding to the line command.  Same results.  No visual feedback for the line command when the UCS was moved away from the WCS.  So, I think I've eliminated my Lisp macros as the problem here, even though they contain the view options _seiso, _swiso, _neiso & _nwiso which were retired years ago (legacy components, I suppose).  Can someone explain to me why they still even work?

Anyway, so, Stephen, I tried reverting back to all of the AutoCAD default settings and I've updated my video driver, but I did migrate my custom settings because I decided it would be way too time-consuming right now to design an entire new interface from scratch, although it appears that at some point this is exactly what I'll be forced to do, along with changing certain parts of my workflow which I really have worked very hard at customizing over the years to optimize my drafting efficiency.

I suppose I may even have to resort to using that blasted view-cube, which seems like totally unnecessary screen-clutter to me.

I do, at this point, get the feeling that Autodesk has no intention of really looking at my situation and working with me.  This is no reflection on you, personally, Stephen, you've given it your best shot and I really appreciate your help.  Hope you see this latest post.  Anybody else out there have any further suggestions?

[Anonymous]

I had updated my video driver prior to installing 2015. Also, I did NOT migrate anything nor have I changed/added anything as far as customization - I am running the stock "out-of-the-box" setup! Also, I use no lisp routines to change my UCS, I normally do it through the Home tab coordinates panel and I am always in the 3D Modeling workspace.

Steve, if you can, PLEASE refer to my either post in this thread which contains a link to my thread and WATCH the movie file I had attached to understand what we are talking about.  This is definitely NOT a video card/driver issue. Als0 (so far that I have found) ONLY the line is affected - everything else, circles, elipse, rectangle, etc - do work correctly.

[lovecraft]

Thanks for staying on top of this, Y57.  And for trying to get Stephen's attention any way we possibly can.  He really did try to be very helpful and may be our best shot at getting anything fixed, but I'm not holding my breath and I'm sure you can understand why.  So, and this is important to me, are you saying that the same behavior occurs even when running 2015 with all the "out of the box" settings active?  If so, then I think what we are seeing needs immediate attention.  On the other hand, if I and others such as yourself, are being forced to abandon workflows that have worked flawlessly for years, then I would like to know ASAP if this is the handwriting on the wall that we ignore at our peril.

LC

[Anonymous]

Sorry, let me clarify that. What I meant by "stock out of the box" is that I have not added, deleted, or modified any of the tabs, panels, toolbars, etc. Yes, I have changed settings in the "Options". I have turned on a couple of toolbars that I run along the top (layers, properties, and measurment tools). I also have the "Sheetset Manager" palette docked to the left side and set to autohide.  Other than "turning on" the few toolbars and the one palette that I run, nothing else has been changed (other than turning off the Bim 360 tab). I have not modified, removed, added anything to the tabs, nor to the toolbars - they are all "stock".  As for AutoCAD itself, I have 14 of the bottom left icons turned off, and the only system var I changed was the "selectionpreview" to turn off the blue highlighting and return to the dashed line(s). I am not running any lisps programs (other than any that may be loaded by default, if there is any) nor any other type of 3rd party add-ons.

Also, I am extremely surprised that it would appear only us two are having this issue.

[Anonymous]

OPTIONS<< Drafting tab<< Object Snap Options panel... "Replace Z value with current elevation" or "Ignore negative Z object snaps for Dynamic UCS" anen't checked, are they?  I'm just guessing here... 😉

[lovecraft]

Personally, I don't use the dynamic UCS method, but I may have to look into it, depending on the outcome of this current discussion.  Look at what Yorx57 has previously posted.  I'm finding what appears to be the same exact behavior.  The problem seems to only occur with the LINE command.  Run PLINE and the problem goes away!  What do you make of that?  Concerning your latest comments, believe me, I'm very careful about snaps of any kind and don't use the 3D Object snaps, even though I do my fair share of 3D drafting.  To me, it's just more unnecessary junk that the programmers (or whoever) think will make our experience more, I don't know, intuitive?, or something.  There is an Autodesk representative currently looking into this for me.  I hope there will be a resolution to this and that yet another workaround will not be necessary.