Anbother newbie frustration - moving parts

[ecoology]

Anbother newbie frustration - moving parts

I'm finding that the move and rotate part commands are inconsistant. With two (sub)assemblies that are constrained to move relative to each other in one direction only, sometimes I can move one of them OK, then without doing anything, a few minutes later, the move command just doesn't work. I've even gotten a constrain error in trying to move them at times. i've tried zooming both in and out to try move, but at random times, the move just does not respond.

As a side issue, the axis arrows sometimes appear, some times not, and some times the arrow pointing in the direction I want to move is the wrong arrow - as if the axis were shifted.

Could this be my computer [I'm running a 1 gig PIII with 634 megs RAM].
I have noticed that as time goes on, AD uses up more and more memory - approaching 300 megs RAM at times.

For whatever it's worth, another program I use - DesignCad, a much simpler program with far less 3D capabilities - NEVER causes these type problems.

I would really appreciate finding out if this is me, the program, or my computer!

Thank all of you, George

 

[swertel]

George:

What is your video card and do you have the latest drivers and version of DirectX loaded?

Second, what are your display settings? Make sure you are only at high color (16 bit) and not true color (32 bit). Also, other users have noticed a problem when going to higher resolutions. I personally have not, but you may need to try that also, especially with an older computer.

Can you upload your files to the binaries section so we can take a look at them? The inconsistency makes your problem sound more like a hardware or user issue than an AD issue, but we can only tel if we test the same situation.

--Scott

 

[siggy]

When I first started using AD I was having similar problems as you are reporting. However, in my case it was user error. I found that whenever I got screwy results I had inadvertently selected a vertex or an edge of the part instead of a face. You might want to check that out the next time you experience this issue.

BTW - I later noticed that as you move your cursor over a part the cursor itself will change as you hover over faces, edges, etc. Once I fugured that out and could consistently select faces instead of edges all of my problems went away.

Robert

 

[Gaspar]

Hi,

When the axis for moving do appear, but the highlighted arrow is the wrong one, you can just click on the arrow pointing in the direction you desire to move. It will turn yellow and the part will move in that direction.

Regards,

Gaspar

 

[ecoology]

Another Newbie frustration

Thank you for the reply, Gaspar. What I meant by wrong arrow, was not that the wrong arrow was highlighted, but the moving direction did not correspond to the arrow that was highlighted!

George

 

[Gaspar]

Ok, I get you...

Any way, I have experienced problems with parts locking up when they still have a very clear degree of freedom left (part with a hole aligned to an achored cilinder). :?

It happens randomly, usually when the assembly starts to grow. When that happens I just delete and redo the align constraint. It hasn't been a big problem for us so I haven't reported it.

When the part "locks", it happens with both move methods:

1) The "move tool"
2) Ctrl + Click on a part and then drag.