How to improve OSnap behavior in AutoCAD Architecture

[Angayo]

Dear forum members,

Here are my two main frustration with Autocad Architecture 2018’s snapping behaviour on Windows 10 :

• Autocad sometimes snaps to distant snap points, sometimes even off screen. That results in time waste by correcting this erronous snap and starting over or taking counter measures (like turning snap temporarily off).
• Autocad places a point very close to a snap point. This small error is difficult to see and sometimes leads to problems later with functions like hatch, aeclineworkmerge or join. Countermeasures are waiting and zooming in and out a often.

Any ideas ?

@Angayo for clarity Tiana.D edited the original subject: How to improve snap behaviour ?

[brian_adams]

As for the first point,It depends on what kind of objects and whether turned on "replace z value with a current elevation" or off
It don't effects to working with flat objects\in a single plane\but could be couse of problems for volumetric objects. For working whith mass of many volumetric objects use "soilate " for current object to work with/ thus you сan avoid multiply "noise" snap
Also check for what kinde of snap turned on for the  current work:-2d or 3d or both of them.

As for the second point, just keep snap grid off, or make snap spacing more essenttial to notice any imperfections.
Working with poly line for the last point use "close" in contex  menu.

Basicly to avoid problem you have got you have to keep in mind that snap is just mechanism and you are the operator/

[Tiana_Y]

Hi @Angayo, 

Thanks for posting in the forum! To add to what @brian_adams said another thing to check is that your graphics card drivers are up to date, and you can also try toggling your hardware acceleration off to see if that helps with the issue.

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[dbroad]

Your post contains complaints that might be valid but which are impossible to verify because they are too vague.  If @brian_adams post didn't solve your issues, please provide a sample drawing  with instructions on how to specifically replicate your issues.  The thread title should relate to osnap, not snap.

The issues that I've had, for example, are related to the need to move away from a point when node snapping to get AutoCAD to snap to that point.  It often seems to refuse to snap to a point if the cursor is directly on the point or when the point itself is within the aperture.  I suspect that, in some cases, my issues relate to difficulties AutoCAD has with objects nested in dimensions, blocks, and xrefs.

[brian_adams]

I admit @dbroad that it happened and to me too, but as I noticed it happened only NOT for 2d wireframe visual styl with any kind of objects
May be it exactly for ACA 2010

[Angayo]

Thank you for the enthusiastic response.

Currently ACA help is not working and the online knowledge base is working badly, so I can’t look stuff up.

brians_adams: “As for the first point,It depends on what kind of objects and whether turned on "replace z value with a current elevation" or off It don't effects to working with flat objects\in a single plane\but could be couse of problems for volumetric objects.”

I am not familiar with that setting, but I am working in 2D only.

brians_adams: “Also check for what kinde of snap turned on for the  current work:-2d or 3d or both of them.”

In Drafting Settings 3D Object snap is not checked. I am not familiar with -2d snap.

brian_adams: “As for the second point, just keep snap grid off, or make snap spacing more essenttial to notice any imperfections.”

How does one make snap spacing more essential ?

Brian_adams: “Working with poly line for the last point use "close" in contex  menu.”

Thanks for the tip. Typing c works as well.

Tiana.D: “Thanks for posting in the forum! To add to what @brian_adams said another thing to check is that your graphics card drivers are up to date”

According to Windows it dates from 16/9/2016 and is up to date.

Tiana.D: “and you can also try toggling your hardware acceleration off to see if that helps with the issue.”

I managed to open my Nvidia control panel and in ‘Manage 3D settings’ there is a list of programs with their specific settings. ACA is not in that list. I could add it, but why would that change anything, since I am only using 2D objects ?

dbroad : “Your post contains complaints that might be valid but which are impossible to verify because they are too vague.  If @brian_adams post didn't solve your issues, please provide a sample drawing  with instructions on how to specifically replicate your issues.

I suspect everyone is familiar enough with the first problem to know that is how Autocad behaves. Extreme events that are clearly bugs are rare. That is the lesser of the two problems.

I timed this post badly, since for my current project I am done having to use large quantities of snaps where minor snap failures lead to problems later. I tried to recreate the problem, but that caused Autocad to crash.

Trying again, without using an XREF, drawing spaces using the vertices of polylings (representing walls) I notice Autocad only snaps when close to the vertex. It would be useful if I could set that distance and increase it a little.

Moving tekst around in the same area, where I drew a space, snap distance is much larger. That is annoying, since I rarely want text to snap.

Removing the space makes snap distance for moving text about the same as it was for drawing the space.

Moving the text around over a space only, causes weird and distant snaps, e.g. a perpendicular snap somewhere in the middle of the space. That is clearly inappropriate behaviour.

Moving text around over an XREF does not seem very problematic.

dbroad : ”The issues that I've had, for example, are related to the need to move away from a point when node snapping to get AutoCAD to snap to that point.  It often seems to refuse to snap to a point if the cursor is directly on the point or when the point itself is within the aperture.  I suspect that, in some cases, my issues relate to difficulties AutoCAD has with objects nested in dimensions, blocks, and xrefs.”

XREFs may be an issue. I only turn them off when speed is an issue, since I can turn off Onsap for XREFs with an add-in. Maybe I should turn off XREFs more often when drawing spaces within polylines and check whether that improves behaviour.

[brian_adams]

Sorry if I have missleaded you. 2d snap is object snap+switched on "replace Z" .Snap spacing is a setting for grid snap. Take a look at setting .

[brian_adams]

Grid snap space in my case is 1mm only by default I make it at least 10-50 mm. Sorry for my English spelling.May be sometimes I use words that have incorrect meaning for you. I am not natively from English speaking countries

[dbroad]

@brian_adams: You express your thoughts in English as well as anyone here so don't worry about your English skills.

@Angayo: Whenever AutoCAD crashes, it usually solicits a bug report from you. Be sure to fill those out and include your email address. Autodesk will respond in some fashion.  If you can replicate a crash, that is a plus and it would be helpful to post that here and in a bug report.

[David_W_Koch]

---

@Angayo wrote:

...

I timed this post badly, since for my current project I am done having to use large quantities of snaps where minor snap failures lead to problems later. I tried to recreate the problem, but that caused Autocad to crash.

Trying again, without using an XREF, drawing spaces using the vertices of polylines (representing walls) I notice Autocad only snaps when close to the vertex. It would be useful if I could set that distance and increase it a little.

...

---

Increasing the value of APERTURE will increase the area that AutoCAD looks for items to apply an Object Snap.  Allowable values are 1 to 50, inclusive, and represents on-screen pixels.  The default on my computer was 10.

If you have closed polylines, you can also use the Generate method to create a Space, that will then use the polyline as its boundary (and the Space will be associative to that boundary).  That would require that there not be any other potential bounding geometry within/crossing the polyline.

[Tiana_Y]

Hi @Angayo, 

I would double check on the NVIDIA website, to make sure that you have the most recent for your specific graphics card, 2016 seems a bit old without having an update. Also toggling the hardware acceleration off is done within ACA using the GRAPHICSCONFIG command, if it is off it can sometimes help with visual issue within the program. 

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Angayo]

brian_adams : “Sorry if I have missleaded you. 2d snap is object snap+switched on "replace Z" .Snap spacing is a setting for grid snap. Take a look at setting ."

I don’t see any replace Z option.

I don’t use grid snap.

brian_adams : “Grid snap space in my case is 1mm only by default I make it at least 10-50 mm. Sorry for my English spelling.May be sometimes I use words that have incorrect meaning for you. I am not natively from English speaking countries”

Practice makes perfect.

Dbroad : “Whenever AutoCAD crashes, it usually solicits a bug report from you. Be sure to fill those out and include your email address. Autodesk will respond in some fashion.  If you can replicate a crash, that is a plus and it would be helpful to post that here and in a bug report."

I copied a floor, including the XREF, which caused Autocad to ponder until I ran out of patience. So I killed it. It does not sollicit a bug report in such case.

Autodesk really responds to bug reports ?

David_W._Koch : “Increasing the value of APERTURE will increase the area that AutoCAD looks for items to apply an Object Snap.  Allowable values are 1 to 50, inclusive, and represents on-screen pixels.  The default on my computer was 10.”

The knowledge article on the aperture command and the command prompt (“Object snap target height”) had deceived me into believing this was not related to snap distance.

A problem is that if the cursor is hovering over an object Autocad tends to snap to snap points of that object regardless of distance. That would explain part of the outrageous snap behaviour I mentioned earlier about moving tekst over spaces. It may even the main cause of the first  problem in my OP. I may be able to exploit that behaviour in some cases though.

Aperture does allow to increase snap distance, but even at 50 it remains relatively small, much smaller than the outrageous off screen snaps Autocad sometimes does. Nonetheless that should help. Thanks.

Another problem with snapping, but that is hard to blame Autocad for, is that there are often many snap points close together and it is time-consuming to insure the right one is picked. A feature that would help would be that one could set snap priority based on criteria, e.g. layer or linetype. As it is I can only turn snap on or off for XREFs with an add-in.

David_W_Koch : “If you have closed polylines, you can also use the Generate method to create a Space, that will then use the polyline as its boundary (and the Space will be associative to that boundary).  That would require that there not be any other potential bounding geometry within/crossing the polyline.”

I rarely use space generation anymore. I usually have to impression to lose more time with it than win.

One problem is that I usually have 3 sets of polylines (representing walls) of 3 floors stacked on top if each other. These lines are often close together without stacking perfectly. The tool can’t know which line to pick as boundary.

Tiana.D : “I would double check on the NVIDIA website, to make sure that you have the most recent for your specific graphics card, 2016 seems a bit old without having an update. Also toggling the hardware acceleration off is done within ACA using the GRAPHICSCONFIG command, if it is off it can sometimes help with visual issue within the program.”

Thanks for the suggestions.

I’ll try updating the graphics driver at some opportune time in the future.

At first sight disabling hardware accelleration makes no difference for snapping. Selected objects highlight less visibly though.

[brian_adams]

"replace Z" it is shorter "Replace Z value with current elevation"  but forget about it / it seems you use ACA like planar Autocad.  I admit I really don't know the reason of your problem with snap
My suspicious at the beginning were about grid snap and working with 3d

But now I completely perplexed 

[pendean]

Post a video of you in action recreating these problems so we can see what you see: use Autodesk's own screencast https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast

Then post that DWG file here for others to replicate what you did in the video.

[David_W_Koch]

The maximum aperture value is most likely kept relatively small to limit the area in which potential Object Snaps will be found for performance reasons.

Snapping in a area with "heavy traffic" can be difficult, particularly if you would prefer not having to be constantly zooming in and out.  You can hover the cursor over the area where the desired point is and then tap the Tab key to have AutoCAD cycle through the points, highlighting the objects involved with each snap.

As for the snap point being far away, the aperture controls the objects for which snap points are generated.  The points themselves can be well outside of it, even off-screen.  For example, if you are zoomed in near the middle of a line with both endpoints off-screen, an endpoint snap on that line will go to the closer of the two endpoints, if there are no other object in the area.

If there are multiple possible Object Snaps, AutoCAD will give priority to ones that are closer to the cursor.  Using the previous endpoint example, if there were other objects in the aperture area that had closer endpoints, one of those would be the initial snap point, and you would have to hit the Tab key to cycle through all of the closer points before an endpoint off-screen would be selected.

[Angayo]

brian_adams : "replace Z" it is shorter "Replace Z value with current elevation"  but forget about it / it seems you use ACA like planar Autocad.  I admit I really don't know the reason of your problem with snap”

I doubt that is just ‘my problem’. My ACA installation is probably not snapping significantly worse than anyone else’s.

Pendean : “Post a video of you in action recreating these problems so we can see what you see: use Autodesk's own screencast https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast”

I’ll first try the solutions I have : hide XREFs when possible and increase aperture.

David_W._Koch : “Snapping in a area with "heavy traffic" can be difficult, particularly if you would prefer not having to be constantly zooming in and out.  You can hover the cursor over the area where the desired point is and then tap the Tab key to have AutoCAD cycle through the points, highlighting the objects involved with each snap.”

I didn’t know about the tabbing option, but it doesn’t look faster than just moving the mouse if the points are not too close. If they are very close zooming still seems required to differentiate them.