Need help with Draft tutorial

[Gravydog]

I am a beginner and starting to work through some tutorials. I am currently working on the Draft tutorial, https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Draft_tutorial, and I'm already stuck!

I have created the arcs no problem, but when I add the lines and try to upgrade nothing appears to happen. I am using a 30" high resolution monitor but I still have to zoom in to a ridiculous degree to see that the ends of my lines do not actually connect to the ends of the arcs. The tutorial says that when I am using the line tool and I hover over the end of an arc there should be a white point and an icon to help me nail it, but while I can get a point to appear, it looks yellow and almost obscured by the mouse arrow and no icon ever shows. I'm also curious why when trying to select the starting point for the line the cursor is a "+" but when trying select the end point the cursor is an arrow? Even when I try this with a high level of zoom and it looks correct, if I zoom in a lot more there is still a gap. (I've tried to find a way to connect the lines after the fact with Join but it doesn't work for me.)

I believe I have followed all the steps up to this point precisely and the data for both arcs looks correct when they are selected. Does anyone recognize what the problem might be?

Rob

High on my wish list: that whatever is in the center of the screen stays centered when zooming. At high levels it is almost impossible to find what you were looking at. Is there a trick to this?

OS: Windows 7
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.18.4 (GitTag)
Build type: Release
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-18
Hash: 980bf9060e28555fecd9e3462f68ca74007b70f8
Python version: 3.6.6
Qt version: 5.6.2
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: English/UnitedStates (en_US)

[chrisb]

Do you have Draft Snap enabled? There used to be some confusion whether an icon showed on or off.

[chrisb]

The tutorial is not very clear about which snaps to enable. Can a Draft guru add this to the documentation?

[Gravydog]

Do you have Draft Snap enabled? There used to be some confusion whether an icon showed on or off.

The tutorial setup has me enable the draft snap toolbar in preferences. I didn't know what it looked like until I found it hidden off the right side of the screen. I pulled down another toolbar row so now I see it and the lock icon say "on" when I hover over it, as well as the endpoint icon showing "on". In fact, all the icons show "on" except ortho. I have done some more experimenting and in no case do any of the icons appear near the cursor no matter how close or far I am from the end of a line.

I just tried a new draft with only the lock and endpoint icons on, no difference. When I try to attach a line to the endpoint of an existing line I don't get any help in locking onto the endpoint. No endpoint icon appears, no "white circle" to indicate where the new line will attach even though the existing line turns yellow when I am over it, and when I click as carefully as I can and then zoom in, the lines clearly are not meeting at the endpoints and often not meeting at all. This is getting frustrating.

Rob

[chrisb]

This is getting frustrating.

Quite understandable.

This is on a different system, but it's how my snapping toolbar looks like, and how the cursor changes. Another source of troubles may be that you are operating in different planes. I'm not really good in Draft, but I think "Auto" should work.

[Gravydog]

Thanks again for all your efforts. Your example is what I expect to see but don't. The tutorial specifically says to set the plane to x-y but I just tried a new drawing with the plane set to auto and the same 3 buttons "on" on the toolbar that you do and it is exactly the same as before, no joy. Is this working for anyone else using Windows?

Rob

[openBrain]

Same issue as in this thread?

[Gravydog]

Same issue as in this thread?

I would have to say not, because as I said, on mine the icon and white circle never appear. It looks like I have wasted people's time because today I tried the same thing on another of my Windows 7 PCs and it works fine. Now I have to track down why it's not working on this PC. Sorry!

Rob

[chrisb]

It's ok, how could you know?

[Gravydog]

OK, I rebooted and opened FC fresh and still not working. I went into Preferences and reset everything to default settings and now it's working! I looked over all the settings and nothing jumped out at me as a possible cause but then I'm not that familiar with all the choices. On to the next thing I can't figure out!

Rob