Why is Layout's select tool so inaccurate?

[samyell]

Hi,

Why is layout’s selection tool so inaccurate. It seems that when one clicks with the selection, tool that the area the cursor refers to is not just the end of the curson (as in the point of the arrow). In this video Im clicking in several places and the tool is selecting items that are not on the point of the cursor. This issue has been around for a long time but I’ve never managed to get around to posting a video of it.

I’ve pasted a video below so you can see the issue.

2018-10-06_1615

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

[DaveR]

I’m not seeing that on my MacBook Pro or on my PC. Selection is very accurate. Right on the point of the cursor arrow. We’ve seen similar behavior in SketchUp over the years and there it’s always come down to the graphics card and its drivers.

[bifterx]

I see similar behaviour, Its like trying to pick something whilst wearing an oven mitt. Very frustrating.

[samyell]

Thanks Dave,

In your videos, it looks to me like you are clicking directly on the item you want to select - I can’t see the mouse clicks so its hard to know when you are clicking. My issue is that if you click next to / near an item, it gets selected. As @bifterx says,

Its like trying to pick something whilst wearing an oven mitt.

I have created a new video below that includes highlighted mouse clicks - the mouse click visibility is a little misleading but I wanted to highlight when im clicking to show that the cursor is not touching the items that end up getting selected. When I zoom right in the selection gets more accurate but when zoomed out the mouse is not accurate at all. At the end of the vid, I zoom out and try to click between two of the text boxes (so the cursor is not touching either) but one of them gets selected! If it were possible to show the cursor as a cross hair (as in SU) then one should be selecting where the hairs cross, but in LO its as if there seems to be a much wider area around the cursor when selecting - it’s just not accurate unless you are zoomed right in.

I have noticed this behaviour on every system I have used Layout on so I’m not sure that its the graphics card or driver (as every system has had different cards / drivers and all were kept up to date). I’ve put my graphics card and driver details below (for the system Im on now) just in case, but this has been an issue for as long as i can remember. FYI, I have checked to see if there is a more up to date driver for the Nvidia card but apparently its the most up to date version (see screen grabs below).

[DaveR]

In your videos, it looks to me like you are clicking directly on the item you want to select - I can’t see the mouse clicks so its hard to know when you are clicking. My issue is that if you click next to / near an item, it gets selected.

Yes. WHEN something gets selected it’s because I clicked on it directly. I’m sorry my screen capture software doesn’t seem to have a way to show when the button clicks occur but I was clicking next to entities as well and they weren’t being selected as your video shows.

I don’t know the exact cause in your case but I mentioned the video card/driver thing because I have seen similar behavior reported for SketchUp in the past and in every case the culprit turned out to be the graphics card.

Despite Microsoft saying the best drivers for the Quadro are already installed, you might try updating them anyway. Go directly to the Nvidia site for that.

[samyell]

Ok - thanks, I’ll give it a go and report back…

FYI, I downloaded a demo of this

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screen capture software, which allows one to show mouse clicks amongst other things - seems pretty easy to use. I couldn’t find anything free that would show mouse clicks

[samyell]

There was a newer driver which I have now installed but the issue persists…

Any advice on what’s next?

Have restarted my PC too to make sure everything has settled into place.

[DaveR]

Possibly reinstalling SketchUp making sure you right click on the installer and select Run as administrator while logged into Windows under your normal user login.

[samyell]

Ok, do I need to uninstall first? Not sure what gets overwritten and what gets left. Do I need to make copies of all of my folders (components / styles etc) or do these not get overwritten if I reinstall without uninstalling?
I did install by right clicking and running as admin when I installed this version so will keep my fingers crossed that this resolves the problem…
Thanks

[DaveR]

Things like the extensions you’ve installed, the shortcuts you’ve set, and custom materials, styles and templates are by default kept in a user directory that is not touched by uninstalling or reinstalling SketchUp. I would start by right clicking on the installer, choosing Run as administrator, and then choose the Repair option. See what happens. If that doesn’t make any changes, you could uninstall SketchUp and clean the registry before reinstalling. If you do that, I would suggest removing the license first and make sure you have the license info to reinstall it just to be on the safe side. Hopefully you won’t need to get that drastic.

[samyell]

Cheers DaveR - will give it a shot and see what happens…

[DaveR]

Good luck.

[Sonder]

This is a problem I’ve pointed out before and does drive me a little nuts. The problem is:

1. Each entity in layout has a bounding box for selection that is larger than the entity.
2. This is the big one, as you zoom out, the bounding box grows in size.
3. The order in which items are placed affects what can be selected, so due to 2, the bounding box of one item can be completely be hidden by another, requiring you to zoom in to select.

This is especially annoying when trying to select smaller items when zoomed out.

It would be great if LO could tighten the selection area, and not have it change with the zoom function.

[samyell]

Hey @Sonder, yes tightening up the selection area would be really good (or rather not having it grow as you zoom out).

Would also be VERY useful to be able to show or hide bounding boxes around items on a page. Better still would be having layers have colours and the dashed line bounding boxes being shown in the same colour as the layer (same as Adobe Illustrator / InDesign). Perhaps there could be an option to show / hide bounding boxes by layer; something like the mockup shown below. This would be where the bounding boxes for the layer that my views are on are shown with a dashed line but (if it were possible) the bounding box visibility of the annotation and dimension layers was set to 0 …

I haven’t had time to try @DaveR’s suggestion but will try it at some point - I have had this selection accuracy issue on every system I’ve used. The new zoom speed setting in LO definitely makes it less frustrating but it would b great if the selection was more accurate.