Using Geopak SS3 .722, I'm finding that when I have certain tools activated and I try to change Civil AccuDraw origin, Civil AccuDraw behaves strangely. I'll give a couple specific examples:
I realize that this behavior may not affect most users because they're not going to be as ridiculous as I am at investigating how things work, and since I know these things now I will easily be able to work around it. (That doesn't mitigate the annoyance.)
It's clear that Civil AccuDraw's origin setting tool is somehow dependent on what the active tool can accept, and my hunch is that this is not working as designed, and indeed is irregular and (in my opinion) should be fixed.
The workflow I was doing when I discovered this strange behavior is that I was measuring areas and needed to know the station at the beginning and end of the area.
(EDIT: I mention this step of the workflow only for context: that is the task I was working on, not to suggest that I expected to find the areas using Civil AccuDraw. Other edits are to clarify that for each case I mention above, I had that tool selected as I was attempting to set the Civil AccuDraw origin.)
Unknown said:the measure area command would not accomplish what you want with or without CA.
I'm hopelessly confused at this remark, and I'm quite sure my thoughts aren't coming through, but I don't know how to express myself any other way.
Yes, I get that Measure Area itself would not get me all the answers I'm looking for in one click. I'm not trying to do that. As cool as that would be, I was never expecting that result. However, in case that was ever going to be implemented, it could be presented as a report just like the alignment reports.
In the interest of being more clear about my position, let's take a couple steps back, here. (And feel free to let me know how I should have started this thread to have been more clear from the get-go.)
At the end of the video you can see that I got what I needed: the begin station for the area I measured. The steps I took was always how I expected to get the station. (I never expected to get it from Measure Area.) I always knew I needed to open CA and then set the baseline for CA, but I remembered too late to notice that it hadn't been set since I opened the file and started measuring areas. That means I was already using a tool that would accept only area elements.
Now, to remedy the problem where CA had no baseline for my S-O coordinates, I clicked to set the origin. I expected that the next input should be able to receive a linear element. Because, you know, I was trying to set the baseline alignment for CA. Instead, I had to select a different tool before I could set the baseline. And then, of course, after setting the baseline I had to go back to the Measure Area tool.
My whole point here is that the tool that is active (and what elements are eligible for that tool's input) should have exactly no influence on what CA will accept as its origin baseline. This was always my primary point in this thread.
A secondary point was that when using various measure tools, the baseline that is finally received by CA is strange.
EDIT: I find that in addition to the various measure tools, when using Modify Element, I can't set the baseline for CA.