Issue with Object Snap Tracking - Nearest

[Anonymous]

I ran across something rather strange yesterday. I was trying to use Object Snap Tracking to infer a distance of 5" to the left of an inside corner of a polyline to create a line in a specific place. However, each time I tried, the line started in the wrong place. It wasn't until I tried entering "non" and then 5" did I find that it was something in my OSNAP settings causing the issue.

I went through each option one-by-one until I found the culprit. It was "Nearest". I have found that I like to have nearest enabled, but OST simply doesn't work the way I believe it should when it is.

Here's how to recreate the issue (make sure nearest is selected and object snap & object snap tracking are enabled):

1. Create a polyline in the shape of a rectangle, 5' x 5' and close the object when creating the last line

2. Offset that rectangle by 1' inside the original shape (you should now have a 1' smaller rectangle inside the 5' rectangle)

3. Draw an arbitrary line somewhere off to the side by clicking the first and second point

4. Undo the creation of that arbitrary line by pressing CMD-Z

5. Try to create a new line but instead of clicking the first point, hover over the bottom right corner of the smaller rectangle (the one inside the larger one) to infer to the left (the green dashes) and type in 5"

You should see that the basepoint of your new line is not 5" to the left of that bottom corner, but 5" away from the second point of the abirtrary line you drew in step 3. Turn off nearest from your OSNAP settings and it works perfectly.

It took me a few hours to figure out what was going on and how to get around the issue, but after discussions with a few other people, no one can figure out why it's working like this. Is it a bug? Is there an explanation that makes sense?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[maxim_k]

Welcome to Autodesk Forums!

Hi,
Following your instructions I was unable to reproduce your issue on my Mac.
Could you illustrate the issue with screencast?
You can attach it to the post here.

Maxim

[Anonymous]

You bet! I recorded a video showing the exact issue. Hope this clarifies.

It wouldn't let me directly upload an .mp4 file so I zipped it up.

[maxim_k]

Hi,

OK, I can reproduce the issue.

But I think it is not a bug because everything works "as designed".

When you accrue endpoint (corner of the rectangle) with object snap tracking you do only half a work to enable object snap tracking. You can only be sure that tracking work if you see tracking vector (green dotted line). If you have NEA object snap enabled and hover crosshairs over the line you can see that tracking vector doesn't appear, thus object snap tracking is still not enabled and you cannot simply use keyboard entry, furthermore - because of the NEA object snap cursor snaps each time you hover it over the line and AutoCAD gets "confused" about keyboard entry.

As soon as you move crosshairs to the left and cursor no more snaps NEArest to the line - the tracking vector appears and you can use keyboard entry.

I attached screencast to illustrate my words.

Maxim

[Anonymous]

I see what you are saying in theory, but the realities of such a workflow are very confusing. While it may not technically be a "bug", it really should be corrected so that it never tries to snap somewhere else when beginning tracking.

Just my two cents and I certainly appreciate your guideance.