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? 

[Anonymous]

lovecraft,

I do not use dynamic UCS neither - I do however use dynamic input.

For others reading this thread - I have attached two screen shots that hopefully will clarify what we are experiencing. In the first screenshot (rotated-1) the arrow points to the box corner that I had 3D snapped (vertex) to.  You can see that I have pulled upwards - BUT the "visual cue" is below and to the right of the part, and is, in this case, lengthening  in the -Z UCS, +Y WCS direction.  If I pick an endpoint (rotated-2), then you can see the line does draw correctly, however, the "visual cue" is still "locked" on the WCS, as after selecting the endpoint and moving my cursor to the right, you can see the "visual cue" still below and to the right of the part.

[Anonymous]

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@lovecraft wrote:

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.

---

LOL... Having been a full-time Inventor user for several years, I truly don't envy 3D AutoCAD users.  I am a Missouri-boy, though, and am familiar with the idea of making the most with what's available. 😉

As far as LINE acting differently than PLINE... it's so confusing when seemingly illogical issues occur!  In my time in supporting software (all sorts) I have found that the software actually does work about 95% of the time.  I'm certainly including myself when I say that 95% of issues I've encountered are sourced between the chair and the keyboard. 😉

Yes, I don't like to have to continually resort to workarounds.  When I get a flat tire, I jack... not jack-around (get it?). he-he

Good Luck

[lovecraft]

JDavis, Yorx57 & others (Stephen, that means you!).  Thanks for that recent description of the identical behavior I am experiencing, Yorx57.  And, again, it does seem to be restricted to the use of the LINE command.

Get this, however.  Even though the LINE command seems to be partially (broken? or is that too strong a term?), the following LISP macro I made a while back still works, employing the standard LINE command which, as you can clearly see, is part of the syntax.  Go figure.

(defun c:ll ()
  (setvar "texteval" 1)
  (command "line" pause pause "")
  (setvar "texteval" 0)
  (princ)
  )

The following also works great:

(defun c:lorg  ()
  (setvar "texteval" 1)
  (setvar "osmode" 0)
  (command "line" "0,0" pause "")
  (setvar "texteval" 0)
  (princ)
  )

Have a marvelous Friday and thanks for all of your input.  I'm not waiting around for Autodesk to do anything more and will proceed with 2015, employing my simple workarounds.

LC

[lovecraft]

Upon further investigation concerning the behavior of the LINE command.  Yorx57, you might want to try this for laughs.  Guess what?  It seems now that if you want to re-locate your coordinate system, say you move from the WCS to another place (change the Z elevation for the test) and want to draw on a plane that would be, let's say parallel to the FRONT WCS, do not rotate about the x-axis (what I always assumed was necessary), leave the axes of your new origin oriented identically to the WCS, and with ORTHO on, just start issuing the LINE command and observe how you can draw orthogonally constrained lines along any plane-- XY, YZ,  ZX, whatever you want in any direction.  Maybe this is the new Autodesk philosophy, eliminating unnecessary steps, but it took some experimentation for me to get here.

Cheers, all, and have a great weekend.

LC

[Anonymous]

lovercraft,

Yes I have known about that - in fact you don't have to change the UCS at all, you can keep it coincindent to the WCS, rotate your view and you will be able to draw a line in any direction. However, this only works for a line, I still need to be able to roate my UCS for circles, etc.  So, it looks like at this point we are stuck having to remember to draw the lines BEFORE we rotate the UCS.  Also, just as I test I turned on dynamic UCS to see if that would work. Nope, same results.

[daxcadman]

I am having the same issue with drawing lines in model space. When I put my 3D object into an elevation view to look at one of the sides and use the line command it will not let me pick where I want. The line always snaps to the 0,0  plane. Never ever had this problem before........

[lovecraft]

I assume you've looked at the other posts.  It is very annoying.  There are workarounds but we shouldn't have to resort to that.  Do you have UCSDETECT turned off (set to 0)?  I swear, this morning somehow it re-set itself to "1", apparently on its own.  Don't know how to explain that one, but the behavior is instantly recognizable.  You may have to draw Plines instead of lines for the time being, and explode them if necessary, afterwards, since, as you probably already realize, this insane behavior only seems to affect lines......not that there aren't other inexplicable things lurking under the hood of this 2015 beast.

Cheers, brother....good luck.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone heard anything from Autodesk" on this issue.

Can't use 2015 until this is fixed.

-JIm

[Anonymous]

jimmcf3000, nope, nothing on this or another "major" issue that myself and others are having (both with 2014 and 2015).

As you can see from this thread, the only response recieved was the usual "update your video driver" - Autodesk seems to think that is the cure for all of the bugs!

[Anonymous]

If anyone from Autodesk happens to read this, do you NOT experience this issue on your machine? 

I'll submit a support request and see what happens.

[Steve_Bessette]

I apologize, I had neglected to respond to the last post.  This issue is odd in that there no specific procedure to reproduce it.  However, it is reproducible in that after a certain amount of time it will occur.  It has been found that it will occur when the UCS is set to a named UCS (EX. Front)  This issue has been forwarded over to our Development Department for further review.  As of right now, the workaround I have found is to reset the program to its default settings (Start > All Programs > Autodesk > AutoCAD 20xx > Reset to Default Settings).  

It is known that this is not the best of workarounds due to the fact that the customization will have to be either reloaded or rebuilt.  Once we receive more information we will post for you all.

Regards,

[lovecraft]

Thanks for keeping up with the other posts regarding this problem. I'm glad
it is still generating some comments due to its frustrating nature.



Eric Cleveland

Drafter/Designer

Commonwealth Dynamics, Inc.

95 Court Street

Portsmouth, N.H. 03801

1-603-433-6060 ext. 19

ecleveland@comdynam.com




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[Anonymous]

Thanks Steve.....much appreciated.

[Anonymous]

hi Steve,

Thank you for the response, I just wanted to add that, for me anyways, this issue was present right from the install, It didn't take any time for it to manifest itself.  Also, as mentioned in previous post by myself and others, it is NOT happening ONLY when using a named view, rotating the UCS by ANY means is causing this to happen.  And just to re-hash what has already been said, it has been found (so far by all of us experiencing this) that it is ONLY the line and fencing window that is affected, everything else (so far), including plines work correctly.

[GrantsPirate]

While I don't doubt this occurs I have tried and cannot get it to fail as described.  2015 is not my production release since it has so many issues, and changes I don't care for.

[MervynThomas6723]

I think we are having a very similar problem. Drawing in plan view 2D is totally fine. Switch to front view and no matter where you click the line you are creating always reverts back to WCS as it's starting point. Rectangles, circles and Plines are unaffected.

I'm hoping Autodesk are going to get this fixed asap!! We've just updated 5 licenses and now have designers with reduced output due to work arounds.

[Anonymous]

GrantsPirate,

Can you tell us the specs of your machine? 

Anyone else out there who cannot duplicate this?

[GrantsPirate]

WIN7 PRO 64bit

CPU Xeon Dual Core E5503 2.0Ghz

RAM 6GB DDR3 ECC SDRAM, 1333MHz, 6x1GB

Graphics nVidia Quadro 3800

Primary Storage 300Gb, 10K rpm

[Anonymous]

Just had a co-worker here who was brave enough to follow me and updgraded to 2015 - same issue, right on the install!! It'll be interesting to see what happenes when/if the remaining 4 decide to upgrade.....

[Anonymous]

GrantsPirate, Thanks for the info. We are using the same family of Video Card. what driver are you running for your FX3800?

Win 7 Pro

Zeon Six Core X5680

24GB DDR3 ECC SDRAM

Nvidia Quadro FX5800 - Driver 270.51 (There's a newer one out)