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Is UCS broken in Acad 2010, or just broken in general?


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I am starting to use UCS, and it has caused nothing but trouble so far. I am using ucs to rotate and edit site plans which do not neatly sit north-south.

 

I have run into two major problem so far.

 

First, copyclip(or pasteclip?) fails horribly. ctl-c copies items just fine, but when you ctl-p, rather than the object appearing next to my pointer cross hairs, it appears miles and miles away in the drawing.

 

Secondly, qleader fails by locating the text far away from the actual leader.

 

Both of these operations work perfectly in the World view.

 

In the particular set of drawings that have this problem, I am working a long way from the origin, as the structures are drawn to scale at the correct Northing/Easting location, for example, here is the output of the id command near where I am having trouble.

 

Specify point: X = 985774.318922 Y = 2956164.286202 Z = 0.000000

 

I have noticed that the effect is less pronounced closer to the origin.

 

My process:

Find a building in my site plan that is crooked in world coordinate system.

type "UCS">"Z">pick two points on the building that I want to be level in the UCS

type "DDUCS" to rename the current UCS so that it doesn't get deleted.

type "Plan" to straighten my view to align with the UCS.

 

Any suggestions? Is UCS just horribly broken, and I should avoid using it? Or is there some feature or setting that I should be enabling?

 

I am using Civil 3D 2010 with the 2D Drafting & Annotation workspace.

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Is there an update for Civil 3D 2010? If so, have you installed it?

 

When you copy do you do so with a basepoint that you select?

 

I don't believe the UCS is broken.

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I do not copy with a basepoint. I am using ctl-c which is mapped to the command copyclip by default. Normally, copyclip will pick a basepoint for you, it appears to choose the leftmost, lowest point in the group of copied items.

 

As an example, I create a new drawing, drew a rectangle near (0,0), rotated the rectangle, and then re-aligned my ucs so that the rectangle is square. I used the copyclip command, hit ctl+p, and the rectangle appeared next to my cursor crosshairs. So far so good.

 

I then drew a line from (0,0) that was 2,000,000,000 units long. Using the "copy" command, I copied my rectangle to the outboard end of the line. Again I selected the rectangle and then typed copyclip, and then ctl+p for pasteclip. This time no rectangle appeared. I clicked on the drawing to paste, and then zoomed out to look for my rectangle. Using "zoom">"e" I eventually found my rectangle, which had been pasted 980,764,844 units away from my cursor.

 

It appears that the farther the object being copied is from the origin, the farther the pasted object is from your cursor when you try to paste it. My guess would be that the underlying code which makes "copyclip" work is still using the world coordinate system to calculate where the object being pasted initially appears. This would explain why the relationship between distance from origin and distance from cursor is linear.

 

To be clear, the commands "copybase" and "copy" work as expected, but copyclip does not. Additionally, switching back to the world coordinate system makes copyclip work as expected.

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Are you selecting your geometry by implied windowing? COPYCLIP imagines a rectangle around the objects selected, which touches the extremities of the objects on all four sides, then uses the lower left corner of that rectangle as the basepoint (much like you said above). My first thought is that something else is being selected with the objects you require aligning, hence the question on windowing. You are aware of the difference between windowing left to right, and right to left, yes?

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@bonehead411.

 

I am selecting an object by clicking on it once. I am not selecting by windowing, and yes, I am aware of the different types of window select.

 

As I pointed out in the 3rd post, I can recreate this problem in a drawing containing two rectangles and a line. This isn't a complicated drawing, and there is nothing additional being selected.

 

If it helps, I can upload my demo file? So far the only suggestions I have heard have been to do it some other way. Is it too much to expect for autocad to behave in the documented manner?

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When you first start using the UCS it can be VERY frustrating. One thing to remember is that unless you are snapping to an existing point, all clicks in the drawing space are on the Z = 0 plane. So when you are selecting a window to copy, depending on where the objects are relative to the origin, the lower left corner may very well be extremely distant from your objects.

 

Uploading your demo file will be fine, but in order to keep spam to a minimum, I think you need 10 posts.

 

Glen

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I think you nailed it. In world UCS the bottom leftmost point becomes the origin point when you paste, but Z=0 which maybe be above or below the plane that your items appear to be in.

 

When you paste, you are taking that origin point and assigning it a new Z (if that "Z" is non-zero in your current UCS).

 

I rely on the copyclip being accurate between UCS changes. I use different USC settings between different drawings because I have a separate file where I do nothing but custom handrails on stand-offs that appear to be floor mounted in the original source file (Z=up), and paste them into whatever UCS I need them to be in on a separate drawing (Z= up from the wall rather than the floor).

 

I use the Copy with basepoint, and Cntrl-V to paste it into the drawing. It's the same as the copyclip, but with a directly specified basepoint.

 

Might want to try some lines from 0,0,0 to your copyclip-selected basepoint and do a properties check to see what the difference is. I suspect you'll find it's not where you thought it was.

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Perhaps seeing it will help.

 

Since I don't have enough posts, I can't put up a youtube link, but if you want to see an example of the copyclip bug in action, go to youtube, and paste this after the address:

 

watch?v=MLwG-d4TFqw

 

If you want to see the qleader bug in action on the same file, past this after the address:

 

watch?v=Yb-qkf3o3v4

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