Parallel problems with imported files

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debenriver
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Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:19 pm
Location: Maine USA and Suffolk England
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Parallel problems with imported files

Post by debenriver »

Hi Eric

I thought I would start a new thread on this because it has got spread over several others.

As far as I can tell the new Dynamic Parallels works really well and does everything it says it does. It is very nice indeed.

But on a drawing imported from DXF it behaves very oddly. It is difficult to explain so I have posted this little video on http://www.whisstock.com/parallel_problem.mov

Basically a parallel appears and then disappears – until you do something else – like draw a marquee. Then it will appear, usually for good, but sometimes only momentarily.

If you draw a completely new line you get the same behaviour.

If you make a new layer and do not paste anything from the other layers on to it, then it all works as it should on the new layer (but not on the other layers). And with any new drawing, or old drawing than doesn't contain objects imported from DXF, it all works perfectly.

I haven't tried with drawings imported from DWG – but that could be why Hubert was having such troubles with the new parallels.

Hope this helps.

George
Eric Pousse
Posts: 1064
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:31 pm
Location: Tours - France

Re: Parallel problems with imported files

Post by Eric Pousse »

Bonjour George,

Thank you very much.
I can reproduce this problem with a new file.
I think that this occurs when a drawing has many layers and when you use the tool on objects which are not on the active layer with the option "on active layer" off.
I will work on it.

Cordialement.
Eric Pousse
debenriver
Posts: 696
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:19 pm
Location: Maine USA and Suffolk England
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Re: Parallel problems with imported files

Post by debenriver »

Hi Eric

I hadn't thought about layers!

The drawing I was using in the video had several layers, but only one was active and only that one was visible – so I was working on the active layer – but I didn't have "on active layer" checked.

But I can now reproduce the problems on a new drawing, so it's probably not anything to do with DXF. Just those drawings had the conditions necessary to cause a problem. One has to beware of red herrings!

Other things I have noticed:

The drawings I am using (both ex-DXF and new) are full size, so they are big and I am zoomed out (to about 10% I would think). If I zoom in there is a better chance of it working properly. In fact, if I zoom in enough it will nearly always be OK. When I tested it to start with, my new drawings were small and at 1:10 scale; and I was mostly using simple shapes and lines, zoomed in at about 200x.

Specially with a complex polyline with many segments (sadly a feature of the sort of drawings I do!), you have to zoom in enough so that it can actually "find" a segment of the line.

Often, if it can't initially draw a parallel, it will draw a square – usually dashed and grey colour. But it is not a phantom marquee, it is a real square, the sides of which seem to be twice the offset (so 75mm offset gets you a 150mm square). It will do this many times until you zoom in enough for it to get a "grip" so to speak.

If however you have successfully drawn one parallel and then move elsewhere to draw another – then if it fails to draw the second parallel, it creates a second copy of the first one it drew – in fact it will keep piling them up as many times as you try.

Very occasionally it just crashes the program.

The real good thing is that it does draw parallels from complex polyline/polycurves. :D I originally thought it didn't do that at all – because I wasn't getting zoomed in enough I guess.

Cheers –– George
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