Allowed Angles

[country]

I quite often draw garage walls at a 22 1/2 degree angle. I have tried for the last 2 hours to find a simple way to do this. I have attempted to put in additional angles but it will not let me use 22 1/2. It says either it is an invalid angle or the new allowed angle is too close (within 1/2 degree) of an existing angle.......??? One of the suggestions I found was to select the wall and input the angle. There are a bunch of walls and the foundation below so this doesn't seem to be the solution.

Is this the type of question I should be sending to support? I searched the KB, videos and did a Google search. No joy.

After finally getting a terrain drawn and proper levels for the garage, I have to get some actual drawing done.

[Joe_Carrick]

Sherry,

 

I think that what's happening is a bit misleading.  When you enter 22.5 it sets 7.5 degrees (3x7.5=22.5) so it should be OK.  Unfortunately that mean you have to be careful not to hit the 7.5 or 15 degree angles as you are drawing.  To me, this is a programming bug which limits what we can do.  Any angle that results in an integer value when divided into 360 should be allowed.  The fact that 7.5 divides evenly into 22.5 should not force an angle of 7.5 for angle snaps.

 

The same thing happens if you try to set the snaps to 30 degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees or 90 degrees.  It's wrong and CA should fix it.

[country]

Thanks Joe. Sure hope they do something with this soon. I would never intentionally use 7.5 degrees and to be honest it doesn't even seem to be snapping to 22.5 even though I have 7.5 checked and the snaps are on, it was always trying for 30 and 45. That's why I thought I had to input that angle. I will shut the plan down and try again tomorrow. I already did the walls by using the angle dimensions but it was a terrible time waster.

[glennw]

Sherry,

 

You shouldn't need to specify any additional angles.

Just check the 71/2 Degrees option and make sure angle snaps are on.

When you drag a wall, check the status bar to make sure you are dragging at 221/2 deg.

 

The same thing happens if you try to set the snaps to 30 degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees or 90 degrees.  It's wrong and CA should fix it.

 

You should never have to set any of those angles as additional as they are all on when Angle Snaps is on.

Or I don't get what you are saying.

[Dermot]

I don't think everyone understands how the allowed angles work in Chief.

 

If you need to draw some walls at 22.5 degrees, then all you need to do is switch your allowed angles from 15 degrees to 7.5 degrees.  You don't need to put in any additional angles.  If you try to put in an additional angle of 22.5 degrees the program will give you a warning that this angle is already an existing allowed angle since it falls on the 7.5 degree increment.

 

The additional allowed angles should only be used when you need to draw something at some really odd angle that is not on a 7.5 degree increment.  For example, if you need to draw something at 9.5 degrees.  Then you can enter an additional angle of 9.5.  This will let you draw walls on 7.5 degree increments but it will also allow 9.5, 99.5, 189.5, and 279.5.  You should use these additional allowed angles very rarely and you should not enter any unneeded ones because they may get in the way of drawing things at the angles you want.

[Joe_Carrick]

Dermot,

 

The problem is that when the program forces an angle of 7.5 degrees it makes it difficult to draw at 22.5 because you can easily hit 15 or 30 degrees.  Sometimes we want to force the angles to be in only 22.5 degrees or 30 degrees or 45 degrees or 60 degree increments and we want to do so easily without worrying about being off by a lesser increment.  Actually, there are only a limited number of angles that can be used for drawing purposes (evenly divisible into 360).  Those are 1,2, 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, 22.5, 30, 45, 60 & 90.

 

However, 1, 2, 5 & 7.5 are pretty difficult to use as angle snaps.  The larger numbers are the ones that are easiest for the human eye to discriminate.  The program should not force the user to use a smaller snap angle than wanted or needed.

[Doug_Park]

Also don't forget that using angular dimensions you can force walls and lines to rotate to any specific angle you want without using the angle snap settings. Unless I was doing something with a lot of things at a particular odd angle I don't think I would even care about the extra angle feature or even the 7.5 degree option. Also make parallel can be used once a wall or line has been drawn at the correct angle.

 

My point is only that there are a lot of ways of getting things on angle besides snaps.

[Joe_Carrick]

I guess I have to ask why CA appears to be so resistant to making this more flexible.  It's not something that would be difficult to change.  They could just replace the 15 and 7.5 degree radio buttons with a drop-down of the following:

 

7.5

15

22.5

30

45

60

90

 

and have just a single "special angle" entry for cases where someone wants to use 5,6,9,10,12 or any other number that will divide into evenly into 360 degrees. 

[Dermot]

I was not trying to suggest that the current system is good enough that it does not need any improvements.  I was only trying to explain how the current system works because it was obvious some people did not understand it.  Understanding how it works should help you to use the program more effectively. 

 

If you have ideas for how you think it could be improved, then please feel free to send in your suggestions.

[Joe_Carrick]

If you have ideas for how you think it could be improved, then please feel free to send in your suggestions.

I think I just did in my previous post.  Since you and Doug have read this thread post is it really necessary to start another thread in the Suggestions Forum?  I can do that but it seems redundant.

[country]

I agree with Joe's suggestion but would also like to thank Doug for the current use suggestions. I wish there was more info in the KB, or elsewhere, on the allowed angles because I couldn't find anything that explained it that well. Maybe a short video could be done so we can understand how to use this tool and its limitations.

[Dermot]

Since you and Doug have read this thread post is it really necessary to start another thread in the Suggestions Forum?

 

Only if you think it is important.   You could also email in your suggestion or even call tech support.

 

I don't normally enter feature requests or bug reports based on random discussions on Chieftalk.  I only read a small fraction of the posts on Chieftalk and comment on far fewer.  There's just not enough time in the day for me to do more.  Any time you see me posting something on Chieftalk, your first thought should be "Why is Dermot spending time on Chieftalk when he should be fixing bugs or adding new features?"  Every once in a while, I see something on Chietalk that I think is really important and I will take the extra time needed to make sure it gets logged in our internal database.  You should never count on that happening.

 

If you think a feature is worth doing, then you should make a formal suggestion.

 

If you think a bug is worth fixing, then you should make a formal bug report.