SNAP POINTS - NO SNAP POINTS FOR ENDS OF LINE SEGMENTS

[Anonymous]

I have been tracing a site plan to create a mesh. There is no neat polyline around the perimeter, so I have had to draw the mesh manually.

I find it a pain when doing things like this that as the mouse hovers over the lines/polylines the snap point at the middle of each segment is shown, but no snap points for the end of each segment. This is really back-to-front for such a task, as I am only interested in finding the end points to trace over.

Does anyone else feel the need to have snap points at ends of segments visible.

[__archiben]

Andy wrote:
... but no snap points for the end of each segment. This is really back-to-front for such a task, as I am only interested in finding the end points to trace over.

you mean you can't pick up nodal points at the end of lines? or is this just happening whilst the polyline is still being created?

and what on earth are you doing tracing meshes at 3 o'clock in the morning mr harle?!

ben

[Anonymous]

I think he's saying there is no indication of the endpoint of a line, like you get a little "tick" at midpoints or defined snap points. This would be handy, especially when tracing / snapping to lines which are consecutive and almost-but-not-quite aligned, or where fillet curves meet straight line segments or other curves. (A circle would be my suggestion) Trial and error finds the endpoint eventually, but an indicator would help speed the process up.

I vote essential!

[Anonymous]

I find it useful when tracing to turn off special snap points altogether
so that the cursor form only changes to the checkmark at end points
and not at the mid-points of the lines being traced.

Stuart has an interesting notion. What could we have ?
Maybe some more visual clues. When the pointer touches a line
a little b shows at the beginning of the line, a little m shows at the middle,
and a little e shows at the end of the line.
Or, some more cursor forms. If the cursor is at the beginning of a line
the cursor changes to a B, at the middle it changes to M , and at the
end of a line it changes to a E.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

~/archiben wrote:
you mean you can't pick up nodal points at the end of lines?
and what on earth are you doing tracing meshes at 3 o'clock in the morning mr harle?!

1:47 actually and I was creating a site mesh/terrain

Yep. Its trying to find the end of the line segment which is frustrating. When you want to trace elements you generally want to snap to the end of each segment, not the midpoint. But ArchiCAD only displays the midpoint snap.

Often the endpoints are easy to see, but when you are tracing a survey site boundary or something like that the boundary can be made of a multitude of segments which are difficult to trace as they are nearly a straight line but not quite.

s2art wrote:
..there is no indication of the endpoint of a line, like you get a little "tick" at midpoints or defined snap points....I vote essential!

Thanks for your support, Stuart.

By the way...
I have discovered the (new?) rather nifty feature that by selecting lines/elements before using the magic wand only the selected elements are traced, but this sometimes involves having to complete all the gaps in the outline you are tracing, which in the case of a survey can be rather a lot.

[Anonymous]

Now I think about it, I once used the workaround of selecting all lines I wanted to trace, and give them circles or arrows at endpoints, trace them off, then change them back.

[Anonymous]

Stuart,
Thanks for the tip, a good idea, but may require exploding a polyline etc. first.