12c2BG.TXT - ACAD R12c2 bug list Compiled by Mike Dickason [72711,3404] April 3, 1993 Initial posting Bugs 1-34 June 13, 1993 Second posting Bugs 35-40 DOS, 1-5 WINACAD The following list of ACAD 12c2 bugs and corresponding work arounds was compiled from a combination of problems I have personally encountered and from messages posted on the ACAD forum of Compuserve. This list was originally called R12BUG.TXT, because many of the bugs listed in R12BUG.TXT have been fixed with either R12c1 or R12c2, this new list was started which lists only the bugs which are still present in R12c2. Many of the bugs in R12c1 were driver related. Since I personally can't verify all of the different drivers, I've made the assumption that all known driver bugs were fixed with R12c2. Time will tell whether or not this is true. I'm not an employee of AutoDesk, nor did I compile this list to discredit AutoDesk. Indeed, I am quite happy with R12c2, but as with any program of this size and magnitude, there are some bugs. This is not an official nor a complete list of R12c2 bugs. It is meant to be used as an informative list to help other users who might be encountering similar problems. All of the problems on this list have been reported to and acknowledged by ADESK. If you know of any bugs which are not included on this list, I would be interested in hearing about them, solely for the purpose of keeping the list up to date. Unless noted otherwise, the bugs are present in the North American version of ACAD R12c2 for DOS, and the R12c1 Windows version of ACAD. Numbers prefixed with an '*' are either new to this posting, or have been updated from the previous posting to include additional information. 1. There is "lockup" problem with a combination of DVIEW, LTSCALE, DRAGMODE, and INSERT using a block containing entities with non-continuous linetypes. The following lisp routine demonstrates the "lockup": (defun c:lock () (setvar "dragmode" 2) (command "._zoom" "w" (list 1999995 499995) (list 2000105 500100)) (command "._line" (list 2000000 500000) "@100,0" "") (command "._chprop" (entlast) "" "lt" "hidden2" "") (command "._block" "lock" (list 0 0) (entlast) "") (command "._dview" "" "") (command "._ltscale" 50) (command "._insert" "lock" (list 0 0)) ) Start a new drawing with no prototype, run the lisp routine and ACAD will "lockup" the system. If I remove the call to Dview, leave the line's linetype as continuous, leave LTSCALE=1, or turn of DRAGMODE, the "lockup" problem disappears. It turns out that this routine does not lock up the program. If you initiate this sequence, then leave the computer running for 3-6 hours and then come back, ACAD will be waiting at the next prompt. Same problem can occur when attaching XREF's. So if this happens while in an important drawing that you haven't saved in several hours (shame on you), just walk away from it and come back later and you should be able to cancel out of the insert and then save. 2. If you use WBLOCK * to purge a drawing, and the drawing contains xrefs, Release 12 resets all xref layer visibility, color, and linetype settings to the values in the external drawings, even when you've changed some of these values and set VISRETAIN to 1 to keep the changes. Workaround: Use the PURGE command instead of WBLOCK * (note that, because of block nesting, you sometimes have to go through several OPEN and PURGE cycles in order to purge everything). Alternately, if your changes to xref layers are minimal, simply reapply them after purging with WBLOCK *. 3. R12 has a problem with Wblocks and file locking when using relative paths to specify the drawing name. With file locking turned on, if I open a file with a relative path, then attempt to Wblock the drawing back to itself using the same relative path, ACAD reports the following error message: Unable to lock file .\MIKE File write locked by USER1 at 10:00 on 08/13/1992 The command sequence to show this... Command: OPEN File name: .\MIKE Command: WBLOCK File name: .\MIKE R11 didn't exhibit this problem. The only way to make it work in R12 is to type out the full path for the Wblock name, which is a pain when you have long paths for the file directories. The same problem occurs if you open a new drawing with a relative path then attempt to save it using the SAVE command. 4. With FILEDIA=1, if you have a repeating menu command such as [Fan]*^c^cinsert c:/acad/elecsyms/fan which attempts to insert a non-existant block, the ACAD displays a text message stating that the block can't be found, then repeats the command as it should because of the '*' prefix. At this point, if you hit any key other than ^C, ACAD will enter an infinite loop attempting to insert a non-existant block. At this point the only way out is to re-boot the computer. 5. When performing a Zoom Extents within a viewport in Paperspace, ACAD is incorrectly computing the drawing extents based on every entity in the drawing instead of only those thawed in the current viewport. To show this, start a new drawing, then place a circle at (5,5) with a 10' radius on LAYER1, then create a second circle at (1000,1000) with a 10' radius on LAYER2. Set TILEMODE=0 and create then use MVIEW to create 2 viewports. Run VPLAYER and freeze LAYER1 in one viewport and LAYER2 in the other viewport. Now perform a Zoom Extents in each viewport. ACAD is zooming over the entire model space instead of just the object space. No known workaround. 6. If you perform a PEDIT Join command on a polyline containing curve information, the resultant joined polyline is stripped of all the curve information leaving you with a polyline made entirely of straight line segments. No known workaround. 7. With a closed polyline, if you perform the sequence PEDIT, Edit vertex, Break, the command will not only break out the segment between the specified vertices, but it also removes the "closing" segment of the polyline leaving you with two separate polylines if you attempt to break out an interior section. No known workaround. Note: This problem occurred in earlier versions of ACAD and is not unique to R12. 8. ACAD does not allow the valid DOS filename characters "`~!@#$%^&{}()'" to be used with the NEW, SAVE, WBLOCK, and SAVEAS commands. Interestingly enough, the commands OPEN and INSERT do allow these characters to be used. Because of this discrepancy, it is possible to open an existing drawing which contains these characters but you won't be able to save it back to the disk with changing its name. 9. Having Limit Checking turned on prevents the you from configuring your tablet menu. Attempting to configure the tablet menu with Limit Checking on results in the message "Outside Limits" being display for each corner of the menu. The work around is to turn it off with the command, LIMITS OFF. 10. With file locking enabled, start a new drawing and attempt to DXFIN a .DXF file which contains errors. ACAD will generate an error message about the invalid DXF file, then re- initialize the drawing editor so that the current drawing name is "UNNAMED" but it leaves the .DWK file for the original new drawing. You then have to delete the original .DWK before you can attempt to start a new drawing with the same name. 11. If you perform a Dview Twist on a drawing, then plot with a window, the coordinates of the window corners displayed in the new plot dialog box do not match the actual coordinates that were picked. Regardless of what the plot window shows, the actual coordinates picked are used for generating the plot. This appears to related to the variable "TARGET", which changes after a DVIEW, but never seems to be set back to its default value (i.e. start a new drawing, look at the value of TARGET, then do a Dview Twist 300, Dview Twist 0, and then look at TARGET again and it is different). No known work around. 12. Here's a minor bug with R12's help command. Run the help command, and select "Index" from the opening dialog box. Double click on any item in the index list (I'll use 3D as the example) and the help screen for that item comes up as expected. Now select "Index" again and the index dialog pops up with the selected item still highlighted. Select "OK" to view the same item again and you get a prompt that says "Nothing selected." even though the item is still highlighted. To get the item again, you have to physically select it instead of just selecting "OK". 13. When using the new Shift to Add feature for building selection sets, the "Window" and "Crossing" selection options add to the current selection set instead of replacing it as documented. No known work around. 14. There is a problem with any command which uses the new File Dialog box to allow for file selection. When you change the file search pattern so that it matches enough file names to require the slider bar to be used then slide the bar to the bottom of this list it jumps back to the top of the list. To see this, load a drawing with enough blocks to enable the sliders in a list box. Call DDINSERT and pick Block to get a listing of the blocks. Change the Pattern specification to anything that will retain the sliders (or just delete the "*" and enter it again). Then slide the list to the bottom and release - it goes back to the top of the list. It happens whenever you change the Pattern specification. However, it will work correctly if you do it a second time - only happens the first time after changing the Pattern specification. This problem occurs in every command which utilizes the R12 file dialog box. 15. With file locking enabled and FILEDIA=0, if you shell out of ACAD and delete the MNX file for the current menu then return to the editor and then attempt to make a selection from the current menu you get the message "Error reading menu file.". At this point the "Command:" prompt does not appear, although the program is actually waiting for the next command. 16. With file locking enabled, save the current file, make some changes, then shell out of ACAD and delete the .DWK file for the current drawing. Now end out of ACAD. You get the following message: Unable to lock file XXX. Trying to remove a non-existant lock. Press RETURN to continue: This message will keep appearing until you hit ^C to cancel, at which point the drawing is successfully saved and ACAD is exited. 17. The new variable PICKAUTO does not work. Regardless of its setting, ACAD allows you to draw a selection window (both window and crossing window) automatically at the "Select objects: " prompt. Setting PICKAUTO to 0 is supposed to disable this automatic windowing, but it only does works for the first pick. All subsequent picks will envoke the auto selection window. 18. After restoring a PCP file which has a default plot file name which contains a path, any PCP files saved (during the same editing session) will contain the default plot file name with path that was originally read in, instead of the current default plot file name. 19. Create a visible attribute on layer 0. Create a block called TEST which consists solely of the attribute you just defined. Make a new layer called HOWCOME and insert the TEST block onto this layer and enter "THIS IS TEXT" at the attribute value prompt. Freeze layer 0. The attribute value of "THIS IS TEXT" is still visible on the screen, as it should be since anything created on Layer 0 is supposed to take on the properties of the insertion layer. Now try to select the block using any command, including DDATTE, ERASE, MOVE, COPY, etc. and you will not be able to. The only known workaround is to THAW Layer 0. 20. When using the fillet command on lines that are residing on different layers, the fillet arc will be created on the current layer with the current layer color and current layer linetype rather than on the current layer in the color currently set by the color command and the current linetype set by the linetype command. No known workaround. Same problem applies to the CHAMFER command. 21. The command DDIM does not work transparently, even though it is documented to do so. The only workaround is to run the command from the "Command:" or "Dim:" prompts. 22. The new TRIM with Fence option does not work correctly with polylines which cross the trimming boundary more than twice. The only workaround is to keep repeating the trim command until all of the polyline is gone. 23. Call REPLAY to replay a TIFF file. Select a file from the dialog box by double clicking on the file's name. Works perfect. Call REPLAY again. ACAD defaults to the file entered before. Click OK: "Error: can't locate file". Press RETURN: "Error: can't locate file". Double-click on the filename: This works. 24. R12 doesn't correctly display or plot certain circles with non-continuous linetypes contained within a block. The following lisp routine demonstrates the problem. (defun c:showme () (setvar "ltscale" 1) (command "._layer" "make" "hidden" "lt" "hidden" "" "") (command "._circle" (list 0 0) (/ 3.0 32.0)) (command "._block" "no_show" (list 0 0) (entlast) "") (setvar "ltscale" 48) (command "._insert" "no_show" (list 0 0) 48 "" "") (command "._zoom" "e") ) If the block is exploded at this point, the circle will show up with a hidden linetype. To make the circle display correctly without exploding the block, the LTSCALE must be set to a value less than PI/2 (1.5706 works). 25. The lisp expression (ssget "X" (list (cons 0 "ARC") (cons -4 "=,=,=") (cons 10 (list 0 0 z)))) doesn't work. The z coordinate isn't being evaluated in the relational test with arcs. 26. The lisp expression (ssget "X" (list (cons 0 "INSERT") (cons -4 "=,=,=") (cons 10 (list 0 0 z)))) doesn't work. The z coordinate isn't being evaluated in the relational test with blocks. 27. If you create a custom linetype that consists of a repeated sequence of two or more dots, AutoCAD doesn't display or plot the linetype correctly. For instance, suppose you create a "3- dot" linetype (a sequence of 3 closely spaced dots, followed by a wide space, followed by 3 more dots...) by adding the following linetype definition to ACAD.LIN: *3DOTS,... ... ... ... ... A,0,-.25,0,-.25,0,-.5 When you draw random line segments with this linetype, some of the segments are continuous, and in other segments the dot groupings are incorrectly spaced or contain the wrong number of dots. Note that this bug isn't new with Release 12. Workaround: Although we haven't discovered a completely effective workaround, drawing polylines with linetype generation turned on minimizes the problem. The first and last sequences of dots are still wrong, but the remaining dots are fine and the continuous segments disappear. To turn on linetype generation, set the Release 12 system variable PLINEGEN to 1 before drawing the polylines. Use the PLUD command or the Ltype gen option of the PEDIT command to change existing polylines. 28. Documentation bug. The ACAD Reference Manual index is missing references to these AutoCAD commands: GraphScr, TextScr, Redefine, Undefine, Script, RScript and Resume. 29. Documentation bug. The ADS Reference Manual example on page 108 which shows how to use ads_entmake() to generate a polyline is incomplete. The codes for the linetype and color were omitted for each VERTEX and for the SEQEND. If the linetype and color are not included in the ads_buildlist() command for these items, the AUDIT command will report several errors in the drawing after running the example as shown. 30. When using the DLGCOLOR command, typing a filename into the default file box will not work unless you include the .DCC extension in the name. 31. In the FILTER dialogue, double clicking on an item in one of the "Select..." subdialogues doesn't work. AutoCAD puts the dialogue away, but the item isn't selected. To reproduce the problem, load a drawing containing several layers and linetypes. Start FILTER and select Layer as the filter criterion. Click on "Select..." and when the layer list comes up, double click on a layer name. AutoCAD returns to the FILTER dialogue, but doesn't copy the layer name to the X: text box. Ditto with using Linetype as a filter criterion. 32. In the Text Location subdialogue of DDIM, two of the choices in the Alignment drop-down list are reversed. "Align When Inside Only" turns DIMTIH on and DIMTOH off, as the manual states, but the effect of these settings is to keep text horizontal when it's inside the extension lines, and to align it when the text is outside (exactly the opposite of what the label and manual say). Similarly, "Align When Outside Only" turns DIMTIH off and DIMTOH on, which keeps text horizontal when it's outside the extension lines, and aligns it when the text is inside. 33. Undo doesn't work quite right with DDIM. To reproduce the problem: 1) Start DDIM and save the current dimvars to a style name, say STANDARD. 2) Draw a dimension (optional). 3) Start DDIM again and make any dimvar changes using one of the Dimension Variable subdialogues. Close the DDIM dialogue. 4) AutoCAD updates the dimension style. Now type U to undo. AutoCAD (correctly) undoes the change to the dimension style. 5) Start DDIM once more and note that the current style is *UNNAMED, rather than STANDARD. Workaround: Type U twice instead of just once (or pop up DDIM after you use U and select STANDARD as the current style). 34. The new "F", "CP", and "WP" selection methods do not honor the setting of Orthomode. *35. There is a problem with using "Auto" in menu macros for building selection sets. Given the menu line: [Copy Multiple]^c^cSelect Au \Copy P Mul \ AutoCAD's implied windowing is activated for the first screen pick, after that you have to physically type "W" or "C" to get a selection window. If you change the menu line to: [Copy Multiple]^c^cSelect \Copy P Mul \ AutoCAD's implied windowing is never activated unless you physically type "W" or "C" to get a selection window. Finally, if you change the line to: [Copy Multiple]^c^cCopy \ AutoCAD's implied windowing is only activated after the fourth pick. There is no known workaround for this problem *36. With only the DOS version of R12c2, the "alignment=right" DCL command does not work for text. Instead it displays the text as left justified. There is no known workaround. *37. The lisp functions (ssget "f"), (ssget "wp") and (ssget "cp") each take as an argument a list of the points that define the fence or the selection polygon. However, if you pass a list containing only a single point, such as (ssget "f" '((1.0 1.0 0.0))), ACAD generates a FATAL ERROR. With the (ssget "f") option you are instantly dumped to the DOS prompt and given no chance to save the current drawing. With the other two methods you are prompted to save before ACAD exits to DOS. *38. Using (ssget "x") in an MNL file changes the value of the MENUNAME system variable. To see this behavior copy ACAD.MNU to TEST.MNU and create TEST.MNL containing only the line: (ssget "X" '((8 . "0"))) Load the TEST menu. If the (ssget) returned a selection set the MENUNAME is "TSSn" where n is the number of the selection set. If (ssget) returned nil the MENUNAME is "_X". There is no known workaround. *39. Using the PTEXT program supplied with ACAD, if you use the "Fit" option and hit at the "Text: " prompt, a "General Protection Exception" is generated and ACAD ends out of the drawing. The is no known workaround. *40. Call up the DDMODIFY dialog box then select the CANCEL button. Type "U" to undo the last command and ACAD will report "Start of Group encountered. Must enter UNDO END to go back further.". To fix the problem, edit DDMODIFY.LSP and add the line "(ai_undo_pop)" after line 128 which currently reads "(defun reset ()". ACADWIN R12c1 Bug list *1. When running the Insert command, at the "Block name" prompt if you use the tilde key (~) to invoke the file dialog box to select the block for insertion, ACAD changes the current drawing name to that of the inserted block. The Undo command will not undo this change. If this happens to a drawing you are working on, the only way to correct the problem is to use the Saveas command and specify the original drawing name, then quit out of the current drawing. A better solution is to use the DDINSERT command to select your blocks. *2. If you hit the F1 key for context sensitive help in the pull- down menus, you will sometimes get the message "Help topic does not exist". To fix this problem, download the file FIXHLP.ZIP from the ACAD forum on CIS. This file contains a patch which will modify your copy of ACAD to version R12c1a and fixes the help context problem. *3. The DLINE.LSP command that ships with ACAD R12WIN does not work when used to draw an arc. To fix the problem, edit DLINE.LSP in the support directory and change all occurrences of _pause to pause, or copy the DLINE.LSP that ships with R12 for DOS. *4. When configured for the Summasketch series of digitizers, occasionally, you will be unable to close a dialog box. For example, when you choose File/Preferences from the menu, the Preferences dialog box is displayed. When the problem occurs, you are not able to CLOSE the dialog box; choosing Cancel or OK will eliminate the box temporarily, but the box will reappear within seconds (milli-seconds). There is a problem with the DGSYS driver supplied with ACAD. Until a patch is provided by AutoDesk, you can use the F2 key to bring up the text screen after clicking on the dialog buttons and it will break the infinite loop. *5. The command DDMODIFY overwrites the AutoLisp function (ver). This occurs because there are several places in DDMODIFY.LSP where the program does a (setq ver ...), which effectively reassigns the symbol ver from a subroutine to a variable.