Movement of drawing objects such as dimensions

[KenFarley]

I'm using Creo 2.0, M140.

I've noticed an immensely annoying behavior in this and presumably earlier versions of Creo 2.0. when I select a drafting entity, such as a dimension, note, balloon, etc. Once I have selected the entity, and I move the cursor over the entity in order to move it, the following things happen unless I am ridiculously careful:

(1) I move the cursor over the entity until it changes its appearance to the "arrowed cross" configuration, presumably to indicate that I can move the selected drafting entity.

(2) I press the left mouse button to initiate movement.

(3) Instead of allowing me to move the entity, I get a rectangular selection box.

(4) Once I release the mouse button, the entity I had selected in now deselected.

This chain of events wastes a lot of time. Is there some setting I'm missing that will make this process "smarter"? It's like a cruel video game that requires me to, when depressing the mouse button, have the cursor *directly* over one of the lines comprising the text, or else I lose my selection. Maybe there is some secret button/key I need to press first to prevent the box selection mode from taking over?

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[rohit_rajan]

by "rectangular selection box" you mean selection box of the view?

[TomD.inPDX]

Part of the "Creo Experience"^tm is the training of the user. Not the training received by the user, but the subconscious Zen that comes along with interacting with it.

This goes much further than just manipulating annotation in drawings. Even the very ability to hard-crash Creo when learning a new command tends to settle down after some usage of said command.

What often happens is that we sidestep our "zone" and things go weird for a little while. This is those awareness moments like that which prompted your post, as in "what the ...." and then we slide back into trance somehow.

Sorry, this is not much help but that is what I've come to expect from working with Creo. Just wait until you experience the new Zen in Creo 3!

[KenFarley]

The thing is, I've been using Pro/E -> Creo for 20+ years. I'm not some neophyte new to the CAD world. We figure out how to use the functions that appear in the latest version, and learn how to do without the ones that have been removed or moved, or renamed. What is bothering me in this instance is not that the method is different for selection and movement of entities, it is that it JUST DOESN'T WORK in a useful fashion. The quad-arrowed cursor implies that I'm ready to go with moving things around, but then I'm forced to endure this "pick the right spot" game for every thing I wish to move. Generating bill of materials balloons on a large assembly drawing, for example, could mean I'm conducting this sick psychological experiment on myself for dozens of times.

As for Creo 3, from what I've seen as to interface changes (requirement of CTRL-select for second entity in a dimension, for example), we are holding off indefinitely on rolling that out. Besides, you have to wait until at least M60 before the really nasty bugs are found in most of these releases.

[TomD.inPDX]

I can attest to the fact that Creo 3.0 has some serious issues since I was foolish enough to believe the upgrades to the SolidWorks interoperability were worth the risk. They weren't, and as a result, I will now be buying SolidWorks soon to continue on my current contract. I have no intention of buying the PTC collaborative extension for SW. investing in a SW license makes a lot more sense than throwing more good money after bad at PTC.

Overall, on Creo 2.0, I have not had too much trouble remaining productive on the drawing side of things. Yes, a few more frustrating hit and miss clicks but is easily made up for in less crashes. However, I have not moved on from Creo 2.0 M040 due to newly introduced bugs and shortcomings in later releases I know the limitations of M040 and am willing to live with them. Maybe I am less intimidated by the click and miss portions because I know to use the 3D mouse to zoom into what I am doing, which helps some. For the most part, I am pretty sure I just zoned out your observations and considered them par for the course. That certainly doesn't make them any less annoying.

Now here is one that does really get to me on Creo 2.0 and even more on Creo 3.0, and I am sure it is a Windows thing...

When you select a menu item, it doesn't stick! You know you clicked it but it just reverts to where you were when you move away from the button. You have to hover of the button some milliseconds after the click or it doesn't do the pick. Now that is something I need to complain about because it is universal on all levels!

[KenFarley]

There was another biggie for me that causes a lot of grief. Usually, when rearranging dimensions, moving them to snap lines, and such, I'm only moving them a small amount of screen space. Getting them away from overlapping each other and the like. The trouble is, they have implemented some sort of "If you don't move it far enough, it must be a mistake, so we'll just put it back where it was" feature. It's not moved far enough, so it snaps back to the original position. Additionally, if you also made other mods, like flipping the arrows on a radius/diameter dim, etc. they are undone in the reversion. Awesome. No way I can determine to turn this off, either. Which I find rather counterproductive, since most of the time I'm only moving things a little bit. The workaround is to move the thing way off from its original position, then wang it back to where I really want it. Yay.

[TomD.inPDX]

Yep... that one too. That is annoying in all versions of Creo. There may be an internal grid that affects this that we can set.

[dhermosillo]

I reported this issue as well and got the old PTC refrain: "works to specification".  Their solution for this was as you state above, move the dimension further and then move it back.

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS190407

So again, a bug PTC refuses to fix.

[DonSenchuk]

I've notice a similar phenomenon with the middle mouse button. For the past two decades I've religiously used the middle mouse button to accept the default selection (Done/Return, OK, etc.) Now, sometimes it works and sometimes it just makes the assumption that I mistakenly hit it and does nothing. It had gotten to the point where it was pure muscle memory, used as I'm flying through different functions. Now, I pick MMB and it just gets stuck where it's at while I've already tried to move on to the next bit and suddenly it interrupts my zen.

The most frustrating is that it's not terribly consistent. Sometimes it works first time. Sometimes I'll hit MMB again when I notice it skipped the first time and it works the second time. Sometimes I have to hit it a third time to get it to accept MMB. No rhyme or reason.

(Yes, I changed my mouse hoping it was a hardware issue.)

[dgschaefer]

I agree. Perhaps you'd want to vote for this:

Consistent Behavior for Middle Mouse Button

[JonathanHodgson]

This sounds like my post from 2013:

Dimensions not moving on first try - just me?

[dhermosillo]

I've been having this same issue a lot.  I reported it to PTC tech support, and their "solution" was "zoom in closer".

So, it is a known issue, but PTC is not acknowledging it as a bug.