Today, I was presented with an issue that a user was having regarding points. After some head scratching, head banging, gnashing of teeth, strong cursing, and general grumpiness, I finally contacted Autodesk about it. Come to find out, it’s a known bug, but one that can definitely be avoided. Interested in finding the workaround?The user in question was having a serious problem with a drawing: any edit he performed on a point was resulting in very slow performance, including slow zooms and pans once he completed the edit. I asked for a copy of the drawing, and he obliged. Once I opened it, I noticed the same issue, but noticed something even more baffling – There was no way to deselect the points once you selected them! I can see why this would be a problem, since it was really dragging down the use of the program. I tried everything I could think of to make the software “release” the points from the selection set, but nothing worked. Finally, the user let me in on a secret – if I performed a regen, the selection set would go away. OK, that answers the immediate problem, but does nothing to solve the overall issue – why is it behaving this way to begin with? I had already turned to the Civil3d.com team, and they were no help – way to back me up there 😉 So, I turned to the next best place – Autodesk.
Apparently, this is a known issue, but it doesn’t get noticed too frequently. Even worse, no fix is expected for the 2007 release (and that’s all I’m going to say about that…) However, once this problem got forwarded to a few more cubes up in Manchester, a possible workaround came about – apparently, this problem only happens when the _All Points group is the first point group in the display order. The quickest way to fix this issue is to create a new point group (heck, call it ALL POINTS NEW) that includes all points, and make sure that one is first in the list. To do this, click on Point Groups in Prospector, right click, and click on Properties. Using the blue arrow keys (as shown below), move the point group _All Points to the bottom of the list.
Have fun!
So what you’re saying is that the builtin point group called “_All Points” when listed at the top of the list can cause the problem? Umm… aren’t they creating the problem with the underscore or am I missing something?
Just curious, if I called the new point group “_All points New”, or anything with the preceding underscore, would the problem persist?
its not the underscore that is a problem, it is something internal happening with that particular point group that is a problem. You can call the new group whatever you would like. You just need to not have the _All points as the top group, or else the deselection bug occurs.
What Nick said…
It’s not the underscore, it that particular point group. It has “special properties,” in the same way the layer “defpoints” had “special properties.” I just tend to avoid any potential conflicts by not messing with that one. It’s typically set to a null style and at the bottom of my point groups list.
One thing you could do – build a new point group (call it whatever) and include all points – do that in your template and you never have to worry about it again.
What do you mean by null style in your comment?? Do you mean set the point and label styles of ALL POINTS NEW to ? Also, when I import or manually create points, the default label style is not what it is defaulted to….. insight on this? ie; It appears to be changing amongst the available styles. When I right click then go to label properties it is always set to but always appears different. I’m also looking for a plot style to use with the provided NCS templates. Wow I ask a lot. Dallas out.
null?