progeCAD support, tips and troubleshooting forum. progeCAD works very similar to some versions of AutoCAD. Moderated.

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#1127 by andersb
Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:55 am
Hej
I have problems with changing which items that should be drawn on top of others.

Try to draw some lines or hatches over each other (make them different colours for easy visibility).
With "Draw order", change which item that should be in front, above etc.
Now - if these items are copied, the draw order in the copy is reversed back to how it was originally drawn!
Worse, if the items are used to form a block, the block will have the original draw order, not as I have defined it to be with "Draw order"!

When I draw I really need to draw everything in the correct order, as it should be at the end - as it can't be changed afterwards (in case of copies and blocks)!
Am I doing something wrong or is this really as it should be?
mvh/anders
#1139 by andersb
Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:25 am
caddit wrote:Hi andersb,
I do notice that drawing order change and selection takes a bit of a "nack" but I haven't noticed anything that I would actually consider to be a bug.

If your application area doesn't have any overlapping parts in the drawing then there is no problem.
But if the application depends heavely on overlapping parts where some parts should hide others - then its a great problem.
My applications are drawings that end up as an etched plate and the drawings are full of overlapping parts.

I often have a large drawing and need to add an extra line. That extra line goes in front of some of the existing parts and behind some of the others.
It is OK to draw the line, selects some of the parts and put them in front with Draw Order.
But if I copy the drawing or if I need to make it a Block, then everything is corrupted.

When this happens the easiest way is to go to a collegue and open the drawing in AutoCad, make the changes of the draw order and the go back to my ProgeCAD.
But it would obviously be much easier if ProgeCAD would work in this aspect!

Actually 2010 works better then 2009 - in 2009 the draw order would revert to the original draw order also when the drawing was closed and reopened! Then it was impossible for me to use ProgeCad - it was QCad and AutoCAD that was used then...

caddit wrote:If you like you can send the drawing to Image
We can have a go with it.


It isn't anything complicated.
Just draw two partly overlapping hatches in different colours. Change the draw order so that the first drawn hatch covers parts of the second hatch.
Select both hatches and make a copy - the copy should look the same (it doesn't - in the copy the first drawn hatch is covered by the second).
Make a block out of the first two hatches and the block should also look the same.
Copy and Block making forgets about changes in the "draw order" and reverts to how it was originally drawn.
The above works fine in AutoCAD.

Thanks for Your answer.
mvh/anders
#1163 by caddit
Wed Jul 07, 2010 4:00 pm
Hello andersb,


We have completely reproduced your bug and been discussing this with development. progeCAD indeed seems to miss the draw order of objects in certain commands as you say. With normal wireframe CAD drawing this isn't very important, but when you are overlapping multiple hatches etc yeah - its important.

The problem has been identified, but my understanding is that this is a very deep problem that originates with the IntelliCAD 6 part of our source code.

On the positive side, we can verify that the COPY command preserves DRAW ORDER in IntelliCAD 7 (currently in beta) and thus this (and many other things) are planned to be fixed in progeCAD 2011, which will be the first IntelliCAD 7 based release. Also, we are going to at least look into fixing WBLOCK for draw order this year - not sure yet if we can really fix it in 2010, but we do have a ticket opened for it to be at least investigated.

Frankly, not the best answer we were all hoping for, but not the worst it could be either..
#1171 by andersb
Fri Jul 09, 2010 2:03 pm
caddit wrote:...
Frankly, not the best answer we were all hoping for, but not the worst it could be either..


But it's a good thing that the bug is recognized and dealt with :-)
Thanks
Anders
#1654 by RobinL
Tue Oct 11, 2011 10:14 pm
It is is now 14 months since July 2010 when this comment from CADDIT about it being fixed in a beta for prodeCAD 2011. But I am using progeCAD 2011 and it is based on IntelliCAD 6 not 7.

I am finding this set of bugs [b]almost intolerable[/b], causing about 150 unnecessary commands EVERY TIME I save a drawing as a new name (as a restore point) and then opening the new version for subsequent editing. All the associative hatchings have to be revisited several times to get the visibility restored. Secondly without this draw reordering, it is impossible adjust the boundary because it is not selectable.

With about 600 drawing entities in my drawing (over 100 of them hatchings) in over 20 layers this BUG needs to be fixed quickly. I will make a separate post about managing the drawing order when there are more than 3 layers to contend with.