Jerky Cursor in AutoCAD 2018

[Anonymous]

I've just started AutoCAD 2018 version.

I have everything working fine EXCEPT for a jerky cursor.

It works smoothly until a command is started.

Then, it takes a full second before it moves and then it jerks, almost as if a snap was set.

I've check past postings and have adjusted as suggested, but, to no avail.

I'm ready to start over and follow any suggestions you all out there might have.

Read Ya Later -KLYPH

@Anonymous, 

john.vellek has edited your subject line for clarity: Jerky Cursor

[JamesMaeding]

@Anonymous 

You have to understand, those kinds of cleaning tools are things the long time forum participators have lobbied adesk to add to autocad, so they are the first things we go through when ripping apart a drawing. Just look up my name if you want to see history on that, and my free purgeids program is still the only one that lets you see which xrefs the app ids are coming from before you clean files. This jerkiness is much deeper than that, and I think it is related to "clipping" bugs in the display software of acad. By clipping, I mean deciding what is on screen and not. I don't mean simple xclip issues, but xclipping could be involved as sometimes unclipping xrefs solves the problem. Anyway, we know how to disect drawings, its actually not hard and we can teach anyone interested. Its mostly erasing things bit by bit and seeing when the issue goes away. So the things you mention are just part of that process and also you must look at other invisible stuff like zero area civil3d parcels and invisible proxy objects. Look up zombiekiller app for a good example of that.

[aaron.isberg]

This may or may not have anything to do with your issue specifically, but one odd quirk I found was to do with docking. If you right click on the "Model" tab in the lower left hand side and select "Dock Above Status Bar" as opposed to "Dock Inline with Status Bar", you prevent the cursor from detecting the boundaries of your view-port. This resolved a very frustrating and difficult to pinpoint cursor "glitch".

[bhackett]

This is way late, i know, but by chance was there an xref in your problem drawing which had text in it that was from the Swiss721 family of fonts?  I tried everything imaginable to fix this and the only things that works is freezing the room name/number layer of the architectural background that's xref'd in.  PS, this problems varies from PC to PC, some are fine, some have the stutter.  

[Anonymous]

Turning acceleration off in "graphicsconfig" worked for me.👍

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> Turning acceleration off in "graphicsconfig" worked for me

In that case you should update (or downgrade) your display driver ... or you only have just small and 2D dwg-files and performance on the display is not an issue for you.

- alfred -

[bhackett]

No solution here, but a workaround (edit: possible solution below).  This has happened in multiple jobs for me and is very peculiar, so it probably won't work anywhere else.  I work in MEP files and the issue can be addressed by freezing the room name/number layer in the architect's background which is xrefed into our drawings.  There is nothing special about the name/num tags in their background.  They are blocks with normal names that are only comprised of lines and text.  Even if i explode the blocks and purge, the jerky cursor problem persists in our dwgs unless i freeze that layer in the xref.  I have no explanation.  It only occurs with one architect (we work with dozens of architects).  I imagine it might be a font corruption.  If i change the font, the cursor behaves normally.  So i suppose a solution would be to change the font to something similar, but we need to keep consistency in drawings so we have to use their font.  It's a standard font.  I have tried reloading it, to no avail. 

[JamesMaeding]

@bhackett 

do you get same behavior in 2019 and 2020?

This issue has gone on so long its across multiple versions now I believe.

[johnw]

Yes same behavior. A small window opens up and shows the PDF is being created, but then progress bar stops moving, locks up and does nothing... same thing for 2019 and 2020 versions

[JamesMaeding]

@johnw 

wow, I sure got lost on this thread. You are talking about pdf plotting.

Since you brought that up, I just realized the other day that a particular shape we use in a linetype was causing all kinds of problems. It was in SCircle.shx, and was meant to be a solid dot, but is really lots of lines to fill a round area.

I recreated it thinner and it was solved. I had caught this a while back and told users not to use it but they forgot.

These "rediscovery" issue drive me nuts as I put things off my radar then miss when troubleshooting.

[Anonymous]

OK. Thank you.

I have 2 d drawings and using AutoCad LT

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi @JamesMaeding 

>> I recreated it thinner and it was solved

would you mind to show the details of these modifications, was it the SHP or the linetype you modified?
In either case can you show the shp or linetype before and after the modification? So we can reproduce the jerky cursor in one case and the well working mouse then?

Thx, - alfred -

[JamesMaeding]

@Anonymous 

Then you should try Bricscad. Its full featured, same as autocad and costs less.

Sounds like a rude thing to say on an Autodesk forum, but, actually it is what I tell users to use here as it does not suffer from the jerkiness. It handles our most intense projects super well.

Its like another gear in the transmission when you try it.

Also, you don't have to rent it, you can buy and pay maintenance, and run on flexlm license server like autocad.

IMO, any business reliant on autocad should have at least one network seat. It solves so many issues.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Thanks for the reply

[JamesMaeding]

@Alfred.NESWADBA 

I can, but I don't consider it a primary way to reproduce the bad behavior.

The issue was with a shape, "SCIRC1". Linetype definition is:

*VIEWFENCE,----0-----0----
A,0.30,[SCIRC1,SCIRCLE.shx,s=0.15],-0.2,0.3

When I looked close at the shape, it has tons of lines filling in the dot its supposed to represent:

To thin that down, I drew a polygon for circle and lines to fill it in:

I used the express tool MKSHAPE to remake the .shp and .shx (it does both at same time).

It worked.

I actually did several plotting tests to figure out the minimum density I could get away with.

This is almost off topic, but we were getting pdf's that would essentially not open in adobe reader.

Oddly, pdf-exchange had little problem with them.

Also, the regens in acad took forever which is what originally made me investigate.

I tell users, 3 second regens max or there is a problem...

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

thank you!

- alfred -

[matt]

So by your advice we can have a jerky cursor when we are using snap, which for me is basically all the time, and if we want a smooth cursor we can't use snap?

[matt]

People stop posting if you don't know anything about the person's problem.   You can cause novice users a lot of problems.

[matt]

For any new people w/ this issue- I opened and closed autocad and the jerky cursor issue went away.

It had magically started when I was the middle of working.  Usually that's because I inadvertently hit a key  or key sequence that changes something.  Maybe the program gets confused.  Who knows.  I tried changing a lot of settings in the snap dialog section and that didn't affect this. Opening and closing the program worked for me for this, but that doesn't mean is will work for everyone.   I use ACAD 2020 Lt.

I don't use the grid, but after the problem was fixed I turned the snap grid on in the snap functions section and the jerky cursor returned- that's apparently how snap grid works.  Turned it off and it went back to a smooth cursor.  This however did not help when I originally had the issue.

Good luck.  

[johnw]

You can turn your "SNAPGRIDLEGACY" to "0" and then the cross hairs would not be 'jerky' until you went into a command...

[matt]

OK so I closed and opened Acad and it worked, but it came back.  I'm on Acad 2020Lt.

So I went in to the snap section, which has several snap functions including object snap, (the top says "Drafting Settings" and it has snap things in there- I set it as a button so have no clue how the get there without it)  and then went to the Snap and Grid button, then set the Snap X and Snap Y distances as small as I could. This was 0.1" for me.  If it's too small the machine says you can't use zero.  And it worked.  If it keeps saying you're trying to set it to zero, change your drawing units smaller in the Drawing Units box or something.  I'm kind of moving on so I'm not trying that.

This is however a work-around to a problem.

My guess is the Object Snap On button get stuck "On" but it doesn't show up in the box (box not checked) and you can't turn it off unless you close the program and re-open it.  Who knows.