Hello to all,

Sometimes there appears a snap, a center point for example, for which the corresponding source arc or circle is not obvious. This can occur wherever several such snap-to points are clustered together. Might there be a way to distinguish the source of a snap point... to be certain which specific one should be targeted to correctly satisfy the intent?

Regards,
Mindset

Hi Mindset, any ideas on how the distinguishing process would work specifically?

- Michael

How about... temporarily Highlight the source object in chartreuse (or a configurable color)?

Hi Mindset, the problem there is that I've tried to avoid using too many special colors for feedback because each one that is used kind of gets in the way of the user being able to use that color for their own purposes in styles. Also after many of them get accumulated it can get confusing, like "oh that flashed chartreuse, and now it's salmon what was salmon for again?", that kind of thing.

What if the curve being targeted by the snap was drawn slightly thicker so it was kind of a bolding effect?

Or is it better to do something different and have some kind of mode where you could possibly click directly on the curve and it would grab the center?

- Michael

How about doing some type of "selected object only" modifier?

Yes, I like the bold Idea!!! OR marque dashed, or such - yeah.

I have also thought about your second option...
Requesting a snap from the desired object... ( as differentiated from snapping at the object of one's desire. :)
I just wonder though, would we then need a context menu to demand other types of snaps??
Maybe not, perhaps the center snap is the only one that is spatially discontiguous from its source object. ?

The second option however does lack the inquisitory aspect of the highlight/bold idea... it is perturbing to find a center point and not be able to discover its source... it has me worried that bigger unknown problems may lurk in my design... that may get expensive later.

Is there a way to test arcs for concentricity? Does the offset command maintain concentricity in such cases?

Thank you for your attention Michael, you are the best!
-- Mindset

Hi Burr,

re:
> How about doing some type of "selected object only" modifier?

The issue with this is that it's not easy to modify the selection while you are in the middle of drawing... But it would probably do the trick when you're having just one difficult pick for the current draw command. Maybe it could be optionally a one shot thing where it reset itself after one pick, so your next point pick could be free. This would be pretty easy to add.

- Michael

Hi Mindset,

> I just wonder though, would we then need a context menu to demand
> other types of snaps?? Maybe not, perhaps the center snap is the only one that
> is spatially discontiguous from its source object. ?

Yeah center osnap is the only one that's disjoint from the object itself... Making it possible for to get a pick that belongs just to the selected object should be easy to set up so I'll give that a try first. The bolding might be more difficult to set up since it could need to happen on a segment within a curve but I can take a look at that too.

Please try and remind me about this when the v4 betas start up and I'll give it a go then.


> Is there a way to test arcs for concentricity? Does the offset command
> maintain concentricity in such cases?

Right now there's no way set up to test arcs for concentricity but it should not be difficult in v4 to set up some more properties that could be accessed from a script to then enable that. When you do an offset of an arc, the offset will also be an arc that shares the exact same center point.

- Michael

""""""A one shot and reset"""""

Thats more what i was thinking. Kimdof like how ctrl+shift+window drag works. But doesnt HAVE to be a key modifier. I dont know if a command can do it though. But some type of "one shot" seems the best to me

Hi Burr, it would probably be something set up in the pointpicker so a script could be run from a shortcut key that would then limit that point pick to only target selected objects. That way you'd be able to set it up on whatever shortcut key you want and it could be triggered while still inside a drawing command.

- Michael