unselectable objects?

[helen]

Hi,

I have random objects, eg lines or text that I can't select, even to see what properties they have. none of my layers are frozen, does anyone have any ideas why or how to fix it?

Thanks for any help

[Jack_O'neill]

could be any of a number of things. is it in all your drawings, or just one or two? You said no layers were frozen, did you check to see if any were locked? If one of the offending drawings is under the size limit, posting it here would make it a lot easier to figure out. Otherwise, it's guess work.

[nestly]

Perhaps the objects are in Paperspace and you're in Modelspace (or vice-versa)?

[ReMark]

And perhaps those objects reside on the wrong layer: Defpoints.

[helen]

Hi thanks fo rthe tips, it was nt those things but it seems to have rectified itself my magic

[Jack_O'neill]

Hi thanks fo rthe tips, it was nt those things but it seems to have rectified itself my magic

 

Video card hiccup maybe?

[Jack_O'neill]

You might try turning on qtext to see if you have any empty text boxes in your drawings. If you do, they'll display as a rectangle. They sometimes show up as jagged lines or "ghosts" when qtext is off. Something about them triggers a funky response in some video cards, they know something is there but not what to do about it. Qtext on will make them visible if that's what it is and will allow you to select and erase them.

[helen]

No qtext boxes. I have the problem again with a different drawing. All the lines have the same properties eg line weight and scale but some are too thick and refuse to be selected, this is getting to be a pain now, any ideas anyone?

[helen]

ps, the lines appear the same (ie with lineweight box on) but when I print to pdf some lines are too thick ...

[helen]

Lines are selectable now! I dont know wh,y but they are still printing out too thick, its a mystery, I might have to draw them again....

[Jack_O'neill]

can you either post one of the offending drawings or email it to me? don't get in any trouble violating company policy, but as I suggested in the beginning, if I could see it, it would be much easier to diagnose.

[helen]

I think it is too big to post to this forum,If you dont mind me emailing it that would be reallly helpful...

[Jack_O'neill]

I think it is too big to post to this forum,If you dont mind me emailing it that would be reallly helpful...

 

No problem at all. Sent you a PM with my email address. I'm going to be gone most of the day today, but I can take a look when I get back home.

[Jack_O'neill]

In case anyone else was following this, here's what we came up with. We took this to email so helen could send me the drawing. It was ok, but the pdf wasn't coming out as expected.

 

I don't think you've got a problem beyond it being an optical thing on the screen. I looked at several instances of the text that looked "heavy" on the screen and they are all the same font and all that. What is different about them is that the ones that appear "bolder" are not exactly straight. If you go back to your drawing and zoom up close, then put your horizontal crosshair under one of the fatter looking ones you'll see it runs off at an angle. That makes it appear to be bigger because it lights up a few more pixels that the straight ones. Same thing with the lines. If you print the thing on paper, at least on my printer, it looks fine.

I think it's just the way the pdf viewer turns on pixels, and there's really nothing you can do to fix that. If you notice, some of the lines look black, some are a lighter dark gray. Again, that's just the pdf viewer.

Here are some images that might help.

This is at the normal zoom level in the pdf viewer. You can see some of the text and leaders look fat.

 

Here is the exact same bit of text zoomed in close:

 

As you can see, the text looks better, but some of the lines look fuzzy. Notice how the bolder looking text in the first picture runs down hill in the enlarged one? You also have something sitting on top of your "5" in that first line. The pic below is enlarged even further. I put the red box around an area to illustrate what I meant about how it lights up pixels. These little jagged edges are what's giving your lines the fuzzy appearance. As you can see, they are all the same size, but since the one on top runs slightly uphill, at some point it has to make the transition to another row of pixels so you get that step. The diagonal line that intersects these shows it even better. See how bumpy it's edges look? That's because pixels are nothing more than rows and colums of squares, so unless something is exactly vertical or exactly horizontal, it makes a stairstep effect. The only thing you can do is to set the software to make the highest quality PDF it is capable of, but you will still see some of this even on the best one...on the screen. The good news is, as I said before, it prints fine. Hope this helps you out.

[nestly]

What's the connection between the unselectable objects in the original post, and the distorted text? Is it a PDF underlay?

[Jack_O'neill]

What's the connection between the unselectable objects in the original post, and the distorted text? Is it a PDF underlay?

 

That situation resolved itself early on (see post 5 or so), not sure what caused it or fixed it. The version of the drawing helen sent me works just fine.

 

The pdf didn't appear to be right on the screen with some of the text being a bold font and some not. Some of the lines were fat, and so on. Thats all standard pdf video freakiness...looks fine on paper.

[clydemit]

try purging the document