Prioritize Object Snaps

[Wish List System]

Summary: Be able to assign priority to object snaps.

Description: I have 5 or 6 object snaps I like to leave turned on, but often times I end up snapping to the wrong item. The two biggest culprits are Perpendicular and Nearest. I use these quite often so I don't want to turn them off, but they often cause me to snap to the wrong thing. If you could set a priority to say Intersection or Endpoint so that if there is one of these in that area it will always snap to to those rather than Nearest or Perpendicular.

Product and Feature: AutoCAD - Snaps

Submitted By: bsanada on 05/23/2018

[Tom Beauford]

That's pretty much how it's always worked. With all those on you'll see the indicator for Endpoint, Intersection, Apparent Intersection, Perpendicular, and Midpoint when the cursor gets close to them and Nearest when it's the only one nearby.

By default both the Temporary Override Keys Shift+E and Shift+P are for Endpoint. You could reset the Temporary Override Key Shift+P to Perpendicular and set Shift+N to Nearest and just leave the turned off. Then when being prompted to select a point hold down the keys Shift+N and pick to select Nearest point.

[bsanada]

I do realize there are options, but those options require extra steps. My proposed solution would eliminate the need for those extra steps.

[e71033690752]

Allowing user defined object snap priority might help a little in specific situations but it shouldn't be common. And in your specific case I would caution against leaving nearest or other unspecific point snaps permanently enabled as it is a common source of drawing inaccuracy as the slightest mouse movement while clicking can cause the snap to change targets at the last second without you realizing that it switched if you don't watch carefully.

In addition to Tom's solution another option is to use the alternate context menu (shift-right click) to select temporary overrides in the rare cases where nearest is useful. For even more efficiency you can use the menu hotkeys, which are typically the first letter of what you want to select but in long menus like the temporary snap override it isn't always the case. The context menu hotkey visual cues(underlines) are disabled by default in windows unfortunately. You can turn them on in the Settings>Ease of Access>Keyboard>Other Settings>Enable shortcut underlines toggle while you learn them. As an example to turn on the temporary override for nearest on would be shift-right click then r (this is one of the ones that isn't the first letter as n selects none). If you select the wrong override you can turn off the override by selecting another random temporary override.

[bsanada]

What you mention about the snap moving at the last minute is exactly why I would like this option. I use the nearest snap way to often to turn it off or have to use addition steps to use it. It would be much simpler if the nearest snap would only become active if other options were not present.

[pendean]

NEArest overrides all other osnaps: there are no shortcuts for this wishlist today, if you want control you need to use the temp override options that have been around for 30+years.

If you want to see if this or any other wishlist is on the way, join the Autodesk BETA program and get front seat view at what is coming up. Otherwise most wishlists are a good decade away from being granted.

[MMccall]

If a snap location is critical I usually don't rely on a running snap, and never run the nearest snap. For critical selection I do the ctrl+right click and then just enter the shortcut letter of the snap I want. It goes by so quickly that I barely see the snap selection window appear. It becomes an ingrained behavior.

[rkmcswain]

I have never worked on a drawing where I felt like running object snaps would be desirable -- for the very simple reason that if you miss the pick, AutoCAD still returns a point.
If you use object snap override, and you miss the pick, then AutoCAD gives you the chance to pick again, instead of returning an incorrect location.

Okay, back to the subject. As Dean says, even if some Adsk programmer picks this up *today*, you wouldn't see it implemented until maybe AutoCAD 2021.
So in the meantime, use the TAB key to cycle through the various running object snaps while trying to acquire the correct one.