C3D 2017 - Bugs and Issues

[Cadguru42]

Another year, another annoying amount of bugs and issues not fixed in Civil 3D. We couldn't deploy 2016 due to these issues and once again 2017 will not be deployed. 

1. Confirmation pending: Curves not displaying correctly with multiple viewports turned on. See http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/c3d-2016-curves-incorrectly-displayed-with-mu... for original issue. This is a complete deal killer for us. Basic viewing of a CAD model should not be displaying lines incorrectly. This one bug alone will keep us from using 2017. 

2. Confirmation pending: Cogo points not scaling with status bar scale change. http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/2017-cogo-point-labels-not-updating-to-drawin... This also happened in 2016 and is one of the reasons we never deployed 2016.

3. Confirmation pending: When STARTUP=2 is selected, if a drawing is selected from the Recents/Pinned list a fatal error for "RegisterToday.dll" happens. This affects core AutoCAD.

4. Confirmation pending: Command line shrinks when switching drawing to Start tab and/or back. This started with 2015 and still hasn't been fixed. It was a confirmed bug with 2015 and 2016. When anything is docked to the sides and you've switched to or from the Start tab, the command line will shrink. It seems to be scale based on viewport size. When the Start tab is opened the docked windows are gone and so is the command line, but when a drawing is opened and the docked windows reappear then the command line rescales itself. Very annoying. See https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017/the-incredible-shrinking-floating-co... for more info. 

5. Confirmation pending: When the Analyze tab is selected, the ribbon grows vertically and doesn't shrink back until C3D is closed and reopened. It's not much, but it is annoying. http://autode.sk/1YCSlnF is a screencast showing it.

6. Issue: Persistant Start Tab behaves the same as in 2016. Always having the Start Tab open is annoying and wastes space. When a new tab is created the Start Tab should show up like in 2015. Many people asked for this behavior to revert back to the way 2015 handled it, but Autodesk doesn't seem to care. 

7. Confirmation pending: As noticed first by @neilyj666, the Cut Plane Icon and Cut Plane Text toggles in the status bar do not remember their settings when C3D is closed, regardless of the CUI settings. This started with 2016 and seems to still be happening in 2017. 

When I find more I'll post, but due to the curves not displaying correctly bug that will pretty much kill our deployment of 2017. 

[Jeff_M]

@Cadguru42, while annoying, none of these are 'deal breakers' for me.

1.) I rarely use multiple MS VP's, but when I do I just remember that the curve display issue exists and carry on. 

2.) I don't change MS scale often enough to allow this to be a big issue. Again, I know it exists so I work accordingly.

3.) This is a real PITA, as I have grown to really like the Start tab.

4.) Definitely a a PITA, but I chose some time ago to just dock the command line to avoid this.

5.) This can be easily fixed. Go into the CUI editor, find the Civil 3D Analyze Volumes and Materials panel, Row 1, sub-panel 2. It will have 4 rows..delete Row 4. OK out, done. No more issue.

6.) This really bothers you? I prefer having Start tab always there. It only wastes space if you have 10+ drawings open, which I never do in C3D..it uses more than enough resources with just 2 drawings open.

7.) Yes, the cut plane icon/text will not stay gone. Minor annoyance.

[Cadguru42]

8. Confirmation pending: Performance issue with Mr. Sid images still lagging. While a Mr. Sid image is in the model space, if you try to trim a line the cursor will lag while hovering over the line to trim. Other modify previews also lag while a Mr. Sid image is present. This was a bug in 2015 & 2016 confirmed to me while on the phone and sharing my screen with Autodesk Support. 

9. Confirmation pending: Mr. Sid images shift if viewport is rotated. Been a bug for many years and still hasn't been fixed.

[tcorey]

Thanks for posting the list. 

What I read in Jeff's response is that if you wait for the software to be perfect, you will never upgrade. 

Best regards,

Tim

[Cadguru42]

---

@tcorey wrote:

Thanks for posting the list. 

What I read in Jeff's response is that if you wait for the software to be perfect, you will never upgrade. 

Best regards,

Tim

---

I know it'll never be perfect. But the fact that a CAD program can't display geometry correct is a huge problem. Especially since that problem has existed for two full versions. Map 3D has not been developed in over four years, yet bugs like images shifting in a rotated viewport and the UNITS of an embedded worldfile being ignored are not minor. Those kind of "minor" bugs cause us to use non-Autodesk products. Changing the behavior of the UI, like the Start tab, when it wasn't a problem in the first place, is just strange, especially when so many people have requested the ability to use it the way it was originally either by a setting or just changing it back. 

These "minor" issues, as some say, add up when you start getting dozens of them. Using workarounds for the minor ones for years until Autodesk maybe gets around to fixing them isn't a real solution and shows a fundamental problem at Autodesk. 

[GZE]

Draging assembly to new pallate in toolspace is not working ("copy to clip board failed")

[Anonymous]

Hello folks! Since version 2016 (SP1, SP2, etc), I've been experiencing a really annoyig behavior moving points in Civil 3D.

1. Program/feature area:
Moving COGO Points

2. Type of issue: (crash / freeze / wrong behaviour / annoying / gui issue etc.)
Annoying

3. Issue description:
When you try to move points with the point selected, you are not able to use any OSNAP settings, mainly NODE which is mostly used for moving COGO points

4. Steps to reproduce:
1)Select a point;

2)Enter the MOVE command;

3)No OSNAP is being showed, plus the mouse cursor gets lost.

This behavior is different when you first enter the MOVE command and then select the point. By doing this, it behaves as expected.

See the gif bellow:

5. Expected behavior or outcome:

To be able to use OSNAP Node to move the points, even when the point is selected.

[hmartinez5]

Is anyone experiencing an issue when opening a file that has been saved with C3D 2017 with a previous version of C3D?

Whenever I open a drawing saved with 2017 in 2015 or 2016, everithing is in proxy state.

[Jeff_M]

@hmartinez5, yes, C3D 2017 files are NOT backward compatible.

[hmartinez5]

So keeping the same 2013 file format is basically meaningless. Very nice Autodesk.

[tcorey]

You don't happen to have Quick Properties running, do you?

[Anonymous]

@tcorey

Yes, I do! To get this bug you must have Quick Properties panel opened and anchored to the left or right of your screen. It's exactly the same case of this bug that I reported for moving point labels at this topic:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/moving-point-label-bug-in-pressing-esc-mouse-...

Seems to be two major bugs related to the Quick Properties panel no?

[jmayo-EE]

1. I just tested this today on 17. I can't reproduce it on my test machine and my template. Not in MS or PS. I could live with this as long as it did not mess up the plots.

2. I can't reproduce this.

3. If you leave startup to 3 as it is OOTB, no issue. Yes I crash if I set it to 2 but this will have no effect on our production.

4-7. We been living with these in 15. Will not effect our production.

This is the test machine. C3D 2017 on a 6 yr old toshiba satalite w/ an amd 2.6MHz dual core w/8 MB ram

[tcorey]

Quick Properties has always been sketchy with giving control back to the user drawing screen. It takes focus as soon as an object is selected, rather than if the user moves the cursor over the dialog. It's annoying, but c'mon, "major"? 

[Anonymous]

@tcorey
See, I dont know what is worser: me, thinking that is "major" or you thinking that is "normal"...

[Jeff_M]

@Anonymous, I don't see where Tim thought it was normal. He said it's annoying, and I tend to agree with that.

@jmayo-EE, the 2. issue about the points not scaling is a hit and miss. In some drawings it works fine, in others it doesn't, then the next day it will work in the drawings that it didn't work in the day before. I do know that as long as a drawing is open, whichever behavior it started with will remain until the drawing is closed. The 1. issue only really shows when far from the origin. I have noticed that with alignments, if the style uses the same layer for the line & curve segments then they display correctly. But change the style to one which has the segments on different layers and they get disjointed. Now, of course, that doesn't explain why it also happens with polylines...

[jmayo-EE]

I will keep checking #1. When I tested this I did work with points in my file for a few hours, opened, closed files, etc. changing scales often. I did not use the SURDB though. Will try that and see.

#2 I checked with an 11 mile long alignment, profile and corridor in NAD83. 6 digit coords. Plenty of curves. checked multi VPorts in MS and PS also tried the corridor section editor. All displayed as expected.

[tcorey]

After thirty years of using this stuff, maybe I've become jaded or maybe my maturity (don't say old age) has made me less reactionary. 😉

What we can agree on is that it should work differently.

Keep posting!

Tim

[Anonymous]

No bad, really. I just feel like major because I work with this 90% of time. So maybe what is little annoying became really annoying to me over the time. Thanks for confirming that I'm not hallucinating at least. Hopefully, they can look into this to make it better for user, because all the time I get myself clicking on empty spaces on screen and pressing ESC to release the mouse cursor trying to get rid of this delay.

My intention here is to try to help to get best software possible from Autodesk, even with these little things. I will keep posting. Thanks!

[C3D-Nash]

hmartinez5,
The 2013 .dwg format is base AutoCAD functionality. The dev team was unable to introduce extensive new Civil features, such as the featureline as corridor baseline, without the AEC Object format change. Hence, why the Civil objects are in proxy state. My guess is any new Civil object or significant civil object core functionality change will likely require this.

On one hand I enjoy the idea of backwards compatibility just in case I need to go back to a previous format, but on the other hand I dislike the thought of delaying significant software improvements just so we can keep backwards compatibility for a few years. And in reality I've probably use the backwards compatibility once in the last 3 years, and that was probably just to try it out.