I've just tried to put some text on a drawing as you do and I am finding that the text tool has gone mad.
To put text down you can either just click and start typing or drag a text box out. Neither works, what happens initially is nothing, if you try and change tool or quit it won't let you. Then I realised that whilst you can't see the text box it is actually there and if you hit the enter or return key, the text box then becomes visible. You can type in it but you haven't got a clue what you are typing until you hit return or enter!
OK I'm not sure what the problem was exactly, I quit Archicad and opened up the project again with no success but I just tried it again but this time doing a 'new & reset' and the text was back working normally. I then re-opened my project and that too was working normally.
It was certainly confused, a bug? I don' know but it would be useful to know if it's happened to anyone else?
Having thought I'd solved the problem and that it was just 'one of those things' a 'confused moment' it appears not. It's happening again, having played with the preferences I have narrowed the problem to a graphics card / driver issue. If I turn off 'optimization for high performance graphics card' it appears to solve the problem.
I have a Radeon 9000 pro 64meg VRAM which is the standard card which my machine came with, would there be much advantage to ArchiCAD in upgrading this?
OpenGL in 2D seems to be particularly wonky. Especially when it comes to fonts. I haven't noticed any advantages (speed or otherwise) so I don't bother with it.
Yes, in fact I would upgrade you video card, I believe your card may be supported but not advised. The better the video card the more smoothly ArchiCAD will run especially in 3D and with projects of any size. The Nvidea Quadro series is what we use and performs VERY well. My machine has the fx 500 (around $300 ) and I have no more problems like this. The fx 1000 and 3000 are more expensive, but even better cards.