Snaps...

[Qshake]

Hi All,

Another question from an Autocad turned Microstation engineer.

I am using Microstation J at work and I also have Microstation 95 at home. Neither of these two programs seem to support the intersection snap. When I use this feature the results are less than appealing. I have taken to trimming elements just to have an endpoint to snap to. Not only is this cumbersome but annoying when I think that in AutoCad this was one of my most prized tools for drawing.

Any ideas? Anyone else experience this? I've asked around at work and have shown others the procedure that I follow and it seems that I'm at least consistent. So far no one has offered an explanation.

 

[DaveVikingPE]

Here's what I have done:

1. I have the snaps button bar always floating nearby. Why this "tool" is accessed from the Settings>Snaps>Button bar menu instead of the tools menu, I don't know.

2. I've left the default snap setting be "key point snap." The reason is that I find more often than not I snap onto key points.

3. I've experienced no trouble with the mid point snap, though. In the settings>design file>snaps menu you can set the default snap type. Now, when snapping to anything, I always snap a tentative point and see if I'm really at the mid point or whereever I want to be. The way my machine is configured, Workspace>Botton Assignments has me snapping a tentative point whne I click the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously. It took some training on my part, but it works for me.

I hope that's been of some help. Microstation is annoying and very quirky, so I empathize and understand that what's fine on my machine might not be on yours.

 

[breaks]

I've been able to use these snaps quite effectively - but then again, I learned Microstation before ACAD and thus prefer it.

What I do to use intersection is:
1) Choose intersection from snap menu.
2) Click "tentative" button twice in rapid succession in close proximity to the intersection you want to snap to.
3)The two lines you have chosen the intersection for should become dashed and/or highlighted.
4) If the wrong ones are highlighted, click "tentative" twice more to find other intersecting lines.
5) When you have the intersection you want, click "data" button and proceed!

This procedure is not as easy as the ACAD intersection snap, but this should work. It takes some practice to become second-nature...

Good luck!

 

[Qshake]

Thanks Daveviking and Breaks. Your notes are encouraging!

Breaks - for someone using a two-button mouse please clarify the "tentative" button and "data" button. :~/

 

[breaks]

QShake -

The mouse button settings differ depending on your settings...

To find out your settings, go to Workspace -> Button Assignments (in the top, pull-down menu portion). This will list what your data, tentative and reset buttons are. Mine are data-left, tentative-right, reset-left/right chord (left/right chord means pressing the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously). I have found these settings to work well, but yours may well differ.

Let me know if I can help out any more!

Matt

 

For most two-button mouses, the tenative, or snap, is both buttons hit at the same time.

One tip given to me when I first started CAD (lo, those many years ago), was to put my mouse back from the snap point a bit, that way I could see where the snap landed without the cursor interfering. And, of course, with Microstation, you can repeatedly hit the snap button to get different snap options.

Using this theory with the intersection snap, I place my cursor on each item that I want to snap to the intersection of, back away from the intersection some. You can snap to the intersection from anywhere on the elements. This way I am assured of getting the correct snap location on the first try. Finally, in J (and maybe SE) the snap button bar can be accessed by clicking on the snap indicator on the bottom of the screen, and one of the top options should be the button bar.

Rob

 

[odinhuang]

use microstation V8,
the snap tools are good for work

 

[jaarhus]

I happened to see this today, and thought I would try to explain how the MicroStation intersection snap works. I will assume you know what I mean by TENTATIVE snapping. By default MicroStation requires that you use the TENTATIVE SNAP twice to get the intersection selected. First, TENTATIVE snap to the first element....then TENTATIVE snap to the second element. They don't have to actually intersect for this to work. If they do intersect just TENTATIVE at the same place twice....they should highlight in dashed symbology if you did it right! Good Luck, hope this helps!

 

[JJuarez]

Qshake,
I to am a Autocad (having to use Microstation) user.
I found the following to be very helpful for me when I was having the same problems you were (are).

I have one of my function key setup as follows:
lock snap intersect 1

This will snap to the intersection of 2 lines.

 

[okeng]

Rob the Poser has the right idea--"tentative" somewhere away from the intersection. Remember that what you are doing is selecting two elements and letting the machine figure out where they intersect.

Another useful snap thing is the "snap divisor" setting. I think it now defaults to "2" which means that there is a snappable keypoint at the center of any element. I have always used this and never "midpoint snap". If you need a bunch of holes evenly spaced along a line, you can change the setting and put them in without calculating the spacing.

 

[sluggo52]

To set a snap and not have to change it each time hold the shift key and click on the snap you want, that will set the snap.

 

[Lorys]

If you have accudraw on or active then from the keyboard hit the I key for instersect snap or C key for centre snap.
RQ for rotate the drawing compass so you can draw perp to last point..
BTW Here is a great keyin
active angle pt2
it will change the active angle to suit a selected element like a line by selecting 2 points.
Read up on accudraw and its menu keys especially bump ~ key will let you use the submenu of tools when using accudraw with other tools..
Go to

http://WWW.askinga.com

There is a great article/tutorial on accudraw..
BTW in Version 8 bentley have sort of imitatated your osnaps from Acad with Accusnap used in conjuction with Accudraw its actually better than acad.. I use both so i don't think I'm all that biased .. acad is better at some things and so is ustn.

 

[123121]

Guys,
visit this web site

http://www.arkitur.se/maf/snuttlisteng.htm

there is tool called 'Quick Snap'. It works the same or similar to auto-snap in V8. It supports the intersection snap.

Enjoy it,
Vlado



Vlado