Error: Automation Error. Description was not provided.

[Kyle.Pederson]

Every so often I run into an issue with this lisp not working properly. Some days it works flawlessly. Other time it does not work at all. Any ideas why I get this error message? It is not my Code.

[roland.r71]

You might want to ask @Kent1Cooper as it appears to have been written by him.

[Kent1Cooper]

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@Kyle.Pederson wrote:

Every so often I run into an issue with this lisp not working properly. Some days it works flawlessly. Other time it does not work at all. Any ideas why I get this error message? It is not my Code.

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I don't have any immediate suggestions.  Are you able to distinguish in any way under what circumstances it doesn't work?  Is there some feature of the Polylines in question that's different from when it does work?  Does it work sometimes but not always in the same drawing?  When it doesn't work, does it later work on the same Polyline(s)?  Are there drawings in which it never  works?  [If so, can you post one that we can try it in?]  Etc.

[Kyle.Pederson]

thanks Kent. I'm trying to get permission to download the screen recorder so it would make things easier to demonstrate what  the issue is. It seems to be when I first open a drawing if it works, then it always works in that drawing, but if it doesn't work the 1st time then it never works in the drawing. I attached a .dwg of one that errors out and one that did work. These were simply opening a blank drawing, drawing a box and trying the command.

[cadffm]

It is an internal autocad problem, @Kent1Cooper can bypass the problem in the program  (and there are many problem with the usual command offset too)

1. The closed polyline have to be a minimum size, depend of the offset distance?

    in this case of a rectangle  ~ factor 2 times bigger than the offset distance

    otherwise vla-offset crashs IF THE POLYLINE IS DRAWED CLOCKWISE.

2. Or you reverse the order of polyline vertexes and it works also with a smaller size.

Just for a quick test,

- Stretch the rectangle size to >12 * >12 (try 12.1 x 12.1 or bigger) because the offset distance is calculated to 6.0)

 or

command: _reverse to reverse the polyline direction to anti-clockwise.

[cadffm]

AutoCAD apparently always calculates the required space at "offset" on the right side,
with a closed contour which runs clockwise you need> 2*Dist space. In this calculation
for space requirements, AutoCAD does not consider which side you want to copy the contour to. Very old bug.