Hi Johnny, what does your "Object snap" button at the bottom of the screen look like?

If it looks like this (with the orange highlight): then object snap is enabled.

If it looks like this: then object snap is disabled.

You can click on it to flip it back and forth.


You probably should also restore the default settings - move your mouse over top of that "Object snap" button and a little arrow will appear above it. Click on the arrow and choose the entry "Object snap options" at the top, and then in that dialog hit the "Restore defaults" button.


Please let me know if you still don't get object snaps working after doing this.



> I've had all sorts of strange behaviors. For example, when I set the snap
> size to zero (to try to get rid of ALL snapping when drawing freehand
> curves), the freehand draw tool would no longer work AT ALL. But, now,
> strangely, it HAS started working when I set snap size to 0. Weird.

You've probably uncovered some bugs involving having that setting set to 0 (you're talking about the one under grid options?). I'd never really intended to have that setting ever be set to 0... If you want to disable all snapping, the official way to do it is to set all 3 snap controls on the bottom bar (Grid snap, Straight snap, and Object snap) to be off (non-highlighted), by clicking on them.

You'll probably need to reset your snap size to non-zero to make things work.

Please let me know if you see any more snap bugs after this, once your snap size is non-zero. It is likely that is the source of all your snap problems.


One other cool snap feature is construction lines - have you found those yet? These work if when you pick a point, you click and hold down and drag instead of doing the normal click and release. This lets you drag out a guide line between any 2 points to get extensions and set up intersections, the point halfway between 2 other points, etc...



> Also, I absolutely LOVE how the freehand drawing tool creates such smooth curves

Thanks, I'm glad you like it! I went through several iterations trying different techniques before arriving at the current one. This one is a lot more stable and predictable than the way these things usually work, it doesn't tend to sort of jump away from your stroke as much.



> but, for me, perhaps the biggest "deal killer" is not having the ability to insert a background image.

This should be coming in to too terribly long, maybe a few weeks or so.


> I also wish it had curve blending

I think that I'll be able to add this in before V1 as well, but it will probably be a few more betas down the road from now. In the meantime, if you're a Rhino user, you can just copy and paste your stuff into Rhino, do the blend there, then copy/paste back again...

Please let me know if your snapping still doesn't work, or if you run into other problems.

Thanks,

- Michael

Doah! (In my best Homer Simpson voice.) I did not realise that the yellow color meant it was active and the blue/gray meant it was inactive.

I was just clicking on the little tabs at the top of those buttons (checking and unchecking various function options). I did not see that rather IMPORTANT little fact mentioned in the documentation! ;>)

'm used to the standard Windows method of ghosting to indicate whether a control is active/available. Now, my snapping seems to be working as expected.

Thanks,

Johnny

> 'm used to the standard Windows method of ghosting to indicate whether a control is active/available.

Yeah, some things are a bit confusing because I've kind of ignored a lot of the standard Windows methods... But it's more fun to break the rules! :)

I had thought a little bit about doing ghosting to indicate the off state there, but I was afraid that it might be interpreted that the button was disabled, which might also prevent someone from clicking on it. Sometimes in regular Windows controls ghosting also means that a button does not apply to the current context and can't be clicked..

Anyway, I'm glad it's resolved for you!

- Michael