Shift constraint angle off hor. and vert.

[KeesW]

I have and issue with using the 'SHIFT' constraint to place elements vertically or horizontally. Sometimes, the constraint puts the object just off vert. or hor..The off angle is around 1 degree or even less and it is often too close to notice. It is only when one aligns it with something that is correctly hor. or vert. that it is noticed. Then, it seems to fix itself, until it re-occurs - usually unwittingly. I've had this happen in many recent versions including AC19.

[Erwin Edel]

Could be something weird in the constraint method settings in the work environment or possibly the grid.

Sometimes it's just a continuation of having one 'bad' element in the drawing and shift picking up on its slight rotation. Maybe something in your template is slightly off axis, if you've been having the problems over many versions and projects.

Frustratingly it is ussually a case of PEBKAC

Are you allways showing the tracker and the angle of whatever you are drafting? I have set up my working units with one decimal accuracy to show in tracker, to pick up on these kind of frustratingly small offsets.

I'm very obsessed with making sure everything I draft is accurate. Slight rotations, decimal 'shifts' in elements... The frustration of fixing it... argh!

[Laszlo Nagy]

When you have created a Snap Reference Line (blue highlight on an edge) then SHIFT will also lock to the angle of this Snap Reference Line besides horizontal/vertical.
So when you have such Snap Reference Lines defined you have to watch.
I actually have the habit of always checking Tracker values before input/placement, just to make sure.

[KeesW]

Thanks Laszlo.
I guess I don't use these guidelines enough and assume that the SHIFT key will always force correct horizontal and vertical directions. It mostly does but when it doesn't it is out by a very small amount which is not noticeable. Does anybody know why this happens?

[KeesW]

Thanks Erwin also. No, it is none of the things you suggest. It just seems to happen. I guess I'll have to use the tracker to check because I am also very fussy about squareness and accuracy in my drawings.

[Erwin Edel]

I had one colleague who would hold down SHIFT to keep things 'ortho' and then at the very last moment did something by first letting go of SHIFT and nudging his mouse before typing to basically make the whole process of holding down SHIFT redundant.

When I input coordinates, I hold down shift, move my mouse along the path I want to follow, still holding SHIFT I press TAB once to go into the tracker distance field and input the number there. The trick is to not let go of SHIFT until you are in the input field.

With snap guides and guidelines it's very easy for SHIFT to pick up on the angle of an edge or line element rather than the intervals you set up in work environment. If you are not using them, you can turn them off (temporarily).

I have also developed the habit if zooming in on whatever I'm doing.

[DGSketcher]

AC used to be really good at snapping to the obvious requirement. Since v19 I am getting frequent "errors" where the snap point is just off a corner but has snapped to an edge. The new blue line guides are clever, but they may be being too clever...

[Laszlo Nagy]

Can you guys give some specific examples or situations?
Preferably with steps so they can be reproduced?
Maybe even stripped-down files in which they can be reproduced based on your steps?
That way we can forward those to GRAPHISOFT for their consideration.

[DGSketcher]

Laszlo, not sure if this is related but I have a simple joist layout formed by 150x50 section beams, if I click on the key points on plan whilst creating a linear dimension line I get circular anchors in usually the right place, however, if I create the dimension line based on the two outer points only and then try to cmd-click to add intermediate points once the tick mark shows I can end up with random dimensions. If I zoom in closer than I should need to then I can generally get the right point but zoomed out with still obvious points I get odd results.

(Recently updated to El Capitan!)

[Laszlo Nagy]

Before you CTRL-click to add the dimension point, does the checkmark cursor properly appear indicating ARCHICAD has found a node? That is what should guarantee that you are dimensioning a node of an element and not some random point in your Viewpoint.

(This does not seems to be related to angles during input to me.)