Before I start, I am still running SU2018.. It does exactly what I want, and I could never be bothered to upgrade as I would have to re-install all my Plugins.. And also, my understanding is that my obsolete 3D mouse doesn’t work in the later versions, so I stuck with 2018.
I have a problem which appears to be getting worse… And I just wonder if anyone has seen this before.
Basically, when I type (on the keyboard) in SU, I often miss characters…I initially thought it was user error, or I was going to fast.. But its not.. I have seen it too many times.. Sometimes it just misses a character.
I am 99% sure its a PC/Windows issue.. But I havn’t seen anything like this in ANY other app.. .Its only SU.
As a quick test, I just “moved” and object and in the measurement box slowly typed 1 through to 0..
When I looked at the box, I had typed 123456780.. 9 was missing… This was done slowly and deliberatly but the 9 wasn’t picked up.
I know it wasn’t always like this as in the early days of using SU it never happened.. But this seems to have creeped in and its so annoying as it leads to horrible mistakes when typing values.
I never thought of asking but figured I had nothing to loose.. Has anyone ever seen this on the old versions of SU or have any idea what could cause it?
There is no pattern to it… I can type 100 chars and they all work.. And then suddenly at a different time I miss 1 or even 2 characters.
Its almost like SU looses “focus” for a second.. I did get a tip some time ago that “Auto Save” might be the cause, but its not.
I just spent the last 30 mins trying to find a pattern.. I wondered if switching from another app triggered this.. But nothing I have tried causes this.. It just seems random.. Sometimes I can enter long numbers. over and over without any issue.. Other times, I get a missing digit on my first attempt.
I have no problem with any other app.. I can type all day and never miss a character.. But I don’t think that SU uses WIndows Keyboard drivers.. The reason i say this is that there is no press to hold/repeat feature.. So if you press and hold a character, it doesn’t repeat… Where as across windows it does.. So feel that SU is interacting with the keyboard directly.
I already tried another Keyboard and its the same, so I know its not hardware (Keyboard hardware atleast)…The mouse in question is a “SpacePilot” and I am 99% sure i remember it wasn’t supported after SU2018 due to Windows/Drivers limitations.
My thoughts:
Maybe an extension or an overly frequent “Autosave” is stealing focus for a moment.
Or is an external program doing this?
Or is your obsolete 3D mouse “drifting”?
There are an older wired SpaceNavigator/SpacePilot …(not the current SpaceMouse Compact) that is no longer supported in newer drivers. (It actually works perhaps, but mine is so old that it needs to calibrate every hours to stop “drifting”: it moves without touching it)
Edit
I just realized that while I was on the phone, most of my suggestions had already been “explained” in a previous post
3rd Party Apps is my best guess… But its the same after killing everything and a fresh boot.. So unless its a “service”..
Autosave.. This was my best guess, as it seems to happen intermittently.. But I turned off AS months ago and it made no difference
What is odd is that today I have spent some time ‘reproducing’ this and can’t.. Its totally random, but OK 99.9% of the time.. .But when I am actively drawing it seems to happen so often (like 1 in 10) that I am introducing horrible errors.. So the whole process is now no longer enjoyable as I have to watch the input box like a hawk, to be sure I type the right thing.
As this seems impossible to force.. But happens in normal use, I need to understand the difference.. What am I doing differently when drawing which makes this happen so often???
I may have made some progress… The difference between seeing this when drawing and when I am trying to force the issue is time… When I am drawing I am often leaving my PC or SU to do something else.. Its seems that as soon as I starting using SU again, I get this problem for a while..
I am still trying to prove this and/or find out which apps seem to affect it.. But after trying continuously to make this happen over many 100s of characters.. I left it alone and got on with things (email, browsing,etc).. But when I went back to SU, as soon as I typed a few numbers, it missed one or 2 chars.
It may be a co-incidence.. But I think its all about how SU regains “focus” after being left idle for a while.. So as I test, I have change the “Priority” of SU (in Task Manager) to ‘Real Time’ so am interested to see what effect this has.
Edit: Priority hasn’t helped.. After typing this, I went straight back into SU and made a change to the drawing.. The first thing I did was to ‘move’ a face and typed 1.25, and it only registered .25.
So I think this might only happen as soon as you re-engage with SU after doing something else…
Sounds like you need to slow down a little when switching between applications.
Are you still using Windows 10?
I wonder what has changed on your computer that this delay seems to have recently started and is getting worse. Obviously it’s not SketchUp since that hasn’t changed in almost eight years but I think you’ve sorted that out.
BTW, you say you’re using SketchUp 2018. Please update your forum profile to reflect that.
Yes.. Windows 10.. i don’ think I am acting particularly quickly… But right then before i typed this, I thought i would prove my theory, so switched into SU.. Moved.. Typed 1.25 and got 1.5 (it missed the 2).
So I do think this is all about how SU regains focus after going idle….
I am going to do a few tests over the coming days…
will update my Profile now.. To be honest, I thought I already did… Sorry
