Premature Command Prediction

[lambwill]

    Myself and most of my team mainly use the command line for inputting commands. Since upgrading to 2014, we've found the predictive command line can be problematic - jumping the gun and predicting commands before we've finished typing. 

   For instace, I use NC as an alias for the NCOPY command (can't remember if that's standard or not), but when I type "N C <SPACE>" at the command line, autocad starts predicting as soon as I type "N" and comes up with NUMBER (an alias for QSELECT), ignores the "C" and takes the space as enter. There are a few other examples that do the same, C & CO and various other 1 and 2 letter aliases - which is a problem as we generally set 1 or 2 letter aliases for our most common commands for speed.

   Has anyone else come accross this, or more importantly found a solution to it? We've tried increasing the delay setting, but that doesn't seem to have an effect. We could always switch prediction off, but when it works it's very handy.

Thanks,

Will

[hwalker]

Welcome to the Forums

Unfortunately that behaviour is correct. Space after a command is also AutoCad's version of pressing Enter.

[lambwill]

   Thanks for the quick reply, I realise space acts as enter - the problem is that it takes the enter before it's processed everything I've typed. For instance if I type "NC<SPACE>", cad often reads that as "N<SPACE>C".

   At first we thought it was just us hitting the keys in the wrong order, but it happens so often and to so many of our team since the upgrade that we've made extra sure it's not us before I asked and made a fool of myself 😉 It's as if AutoCAD's distracted by looking up with commands starting with the first letter and misses the rest while it's thinking about it, then takes the space to mean you want the command it predicted befor it's caught up with the rest of the input.

  I hope that clears up what I mean!

[Neil47]

Using spacebar or Enter key selects the command that is at the top of the suggestion list.  One way round is to turn off this suggestions list, right click in the command line,  select auto complete and deselect suggestion list

[lambwill]

Thanks, but again that's not the problem - I'll try and break it down to make clear what I mean...

This is what I'd expect to happen as I type "NC<SPACE>"

    Press "N"  - command list pops up for commands begining with "N", with NUMBER at the top

    Press "C" - command list updates to list comands starting with "NC", with NC at the top (a defined alias for NCOPY)

    Press <SPACE> - CAD runs the NCOPY command

What often happens is...

    Press "N"  - command list pops up for commands begining with "N", with NUMBER at the top

    Press "C" - nothing happens

    Press <SPACE> - CAD runs the NUMBER command, then sends the "C" to the command line

If we type slowly CAD has time to catch up and registers the "C" key (in the above example), but that defeats the object of using the command line for speed in the first place. Again, we have tripple checked that we're entering the keys in the right order - it's definately CAD getting it wrong!

[DavidTosh]

I see a similar "failure to parse" - most often when I'm typing the command "CP" to perform a copy. I've noticed that if an auto-save fires between the two characters, the command is interpreted as a "C" (circle) command with a worthless "P" sub command.

What's interesting is how often this sequence hits me in a day's worth of work! I would have guessed this combination of events might happen once a week (I don't type all that slowly that I invite background tasks to leap in to fill the void.) I see this a couple of times a day, sometimes.

There may be other events that happen within 2014 (both LT and full versions) that cause a distraction to the command line parser that we are seeing. Having XX years on AutoCAD from 2000i onwards, I am sure this is a new behavior sometime after 2009.

[GrantsPirate]

I have the same thing happening here, it worked fine on 2013 but on 2014 the program just ignores the second letter.  Very frustrating.  I have tried various settings but I haven't found one that solves the problem.

[DavidTosh]

In addition to my example (being interrupted by an autosave) I also understand what you are saying in your example:

The auto suggestion list of commands pops up and if the top suggestion is not correct, is still executed by the space following the letter that _should_ have re-built the list.

It's like there is a race condition between a task that asynchronously builds the suggestion list and the task that triggers the command completion based on the space or enter characters. I find that in a few commands where I have been misunderstoon, I have defensively added a down arrow (or two) to improve the suggestion and highlight the correct command in the list before hitting space.

Yet, I don't really want to turn off the suggestions - there are a couple of places I need it to remind me of rarely used, obscure three letter shortcuts I have created but not prefectly memorized.

[JDMather]

What if you increase the suggestion delay time?

[nestly2]

Does it also happen when using <enter> instead of <space bar>

If the command line is floating, maybe try docking it.

[lambwill]

   I always use space for enter so I've not tried using the enter key, but we're so used to using <space> it's no better a solution than typing slowly if it does work. My command line is always docked, I'm not sure if having it floating would help but I might give it a go - still not an ideal solution.

   Increasing the delay time was the first thing we thought of - unfortunately it has no effect on the issue.

Still, I'm glad to hear it's not just us with this problem!

[3wood]

For me, I just turned it off. I search in the menu for commands not used frequently.

[scot-65]

JDMather has the correct suggestion.
At first I increased the delay time by 2.
This was not enough.
It is now set to 4 times the initial setting.
It's better, and not as annoying as it used to be...

[fcopley]

Interesting that in this thread:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-2013-2014-DWG-Format/AutoCAD-2014-C3D2014-Keyboard-2-Key-Comma...

the consensus was to adust the delay time the other direction.  And though that one is marked as solved, I don't think that it is.

Turning off auto correct, (not auto complete) seems to help for me.

[lambwill]

Adjusting the time delay made didn't fix the problem for me either, I'll try turning off autocorrect myself and see if that does it. Thanks for your help.

[KuriosCowboy]

I found this to be quite annoying, as well. Since increasing or decreasing the delay time did nothing for me, I just turned it off. Ive already momorized all the commands I use anyway, so the feature wasnt as handy as for, say, a newer user.

[rkmcswain]

I'm not discounting your experience with this, because I have seen other complaints on it and I have seen it myself on occasion.

Having said that, I'm sitting here on 2014 trying to recreate the problem and I can't.

I type in NC very slowly, very fast, medium speed -- use the space bar, enter key --- basically every combination I can think of and I can't get any command to fire except NCOPY.  I've adjusted many of the autocomplete settings also, with no change. I'm really at a loss on how it's coming up with NUMBER - unless your settings are set to Sort Suggestions "According to frequency of usage" and you also run the NUMBER command a lot.

If you have the time and want to pursue it, consider using Project Chronicle to capture the live action of your AutoCAD as you recreate it. I for one would like to see how it's working for you as compared to here.

Here is a recording I made with a floating command line.

[owen66]

ran into this with 2015 - where i want to copy something and i hit C and autocomplete highlights CIRCLE first and then i hit the O followed quickly by the spacebar so ACAD doesn't have enough time to catch the O and look up COPY so it just reads the spacebar and i get the CIRCLE command.

i just disabled autocomplete (INPUTSEARCHOPTIONS) as hinted by JDMathers

[GrantsPirate]

---

@owen66 wrote:

ran into this with 2015 - where i want to copy something and i hit C and autocomplete highlights CIRCLE first and then i hit the O followed quickly by the spacebar so ACAD doesn't have enough time to catch the O and look up COPY so it just reads the spacebar and i get the CIRCLE command.

i just disabled autocomplete (INPUTSEARCHOPTIONS) as hinted by JDMathers

---

I like the feature so turning it off is not a valid solution.  The thing works great on 2013, not as great on 2014, and not at all on 2015.

[Neil47]

Is this overriding any command shortcuts you have in acad.pgp?