Software Bug or Operator Bug

[Nick68]

Hello, and welcome to my problem...When I use the circle tool I get inconsistant measuring results. Lets say I want a 4.600" circle: Click circle tool, place cirlce on board, inter dimesions(5.600") into the size window. The circle shows up as 5.602 x 5.602. Sometimes, it will show up in the size window as 5.607 x 5.586(or other)...
This problem has been with me for about a year or so. 32bit win xp sp2
This problem has also folllowed me to a re-furbed 64bit pc. win7 sp2
This problem has also followed me through several Project Desiger updates.
This problem persists with/without snap to grid, and or snap to edge.(with both snap to grid and edge I get 5.594 x 5.594, When I use the center H and ceter V it will change the dimensions to 5.602 x 5.586)

[mtylerfl]

It's not you...it's the software. It's some kind of rather odd math rounding that takes place.

Designer 2 doesn't do that. If I draw a circle and specify a diameter of 5.6" then that's what it is. However, be aware that Designer dimensions are "good" only to 3 decimal places. For example, If I want the circle to be 5.0625" and attempt to type that in, it will be truncated to 5.062" in Designer 2 and 5.063" in previous versions of Designer.

[bergerud]

I believe this was only a problem with the display edit box. The numbers were being rounded off to the nearest 1/128 or something like that. The actual numbers on the board were ok. It was hard to know what the size of a circle was since it was not displayed on the board. Try a square. You will see that the size of the square is what you choose it to be. It is just that the displayed number in the edit box gets rounded.

This annoyance is fixed in 2.0.

[mtylerfl]

That sounds familiar. I spoke with one of the engineers about this last year. It does indeed have something to do with the resolution...I was thinking it was 1/256 but you may be right about the 1/128.

TIP: when I feel like I need more "precision" I will draw my vectors in another program (usually CorelDraw) save the vectors as DXF, then import them into Designer using the DXF Importer. I totally ignore whatever the displayed dimensions are in Designer and trust that all my vectors are fine. So far, that has worked perfectly and has not caused me any problems for "fit critical" parts.

[Nick68]

Ok, I will continue to be annoyed until I can afford the 2.0 upgrade.
CarveWright still rocks in my book!

p.s.
I think this problem is the first "problem" that was not an Operator Inflected Problem.



Keep'n it Clean,
Nick68