Tip: Avoiding Misconstrained Angles When Using Shift

[Link]

For those users who have not yet discovered this feature:

Ever wondered why when you hold down shift, your cursor doesn't always constrain to horizontal or vertical or any angle that you have defined in the Mouse Constraints? Well it depends on when you press shift, or more accurately where. This usually happens when you are modeling continuous elements (like a continuous wall) or a polygon shape (like a non-rectangular slab). Where your cursor is when you hit the shift button will depend on where ArchiCAD moves the edit origin. The edit origin will jump to the nearest node of the element you are creating.

Furthermore, depending more on the location of your cursor (relative to that node) when you hit shift, the mouse will constrain to any of the angles defined in Mouse Constraints, plus an angle that is perpendicular to the last point in your polygon & the node the edit origin relocated to, plus an angle that follows any part of the element you were hovering over.

Maybe you won't this feature much, but maybe being aware of it should help you avoid it. If that's the case it seems it would be best to hold shift down as soon as you have set the direction!

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Link, you have no idea (well you probably do) how annoying it is when it does that, and I finially know how to avoid it!!

Thanks for the tip,
Dan