Topic: Troubleshooting SmartCAM Cursors
Technote 229
Date: April 2007
Product: All SmartCAM Applications
Version: v14 and up
Problem:
The problem I am having is:
The Snap and Free-Coordinate icons are missing.
The separate snap and free-coordinate icons have been removed from the SmartCAM user interface. However, the
related functionality still exists. It is now in a simpler combination mode. This change is documented
in your application's help file. Select Help > What's New. From the What's New help topic, select 'Issues to Note.'
The large Free-Coordinate cursor is jumpy or flashes when moved.
This is due to the Linear Increment being set too coarsely. Set this value to a smaller number, such
as 0.0001.
Open Utility > Increment, then set Linear Increment to a small value. Use File > Keep Defaults to
save this value between SmartCAM sessions.
When not needed, you can also turn off unnecessary snap modes. The snap modes icons allow you to
select whether to snap to End Points, Mid-Point, Center-point, Intersections, and Spline/Polyline control
points. If any of these snap modes are not currently needed, turn them off.
The small Snap cursor is not a small "cross" shape.
This is a Window's controlled setting, configured by your Theme or by the Mouse Properties control panel.
Open the Mouse Properties control panel and select the Pointers tab. SmartCAM is using the 'Precision Select' cursor.
Whatever cursor you have configured to be used, for this selection, will be used by SmartCAM.
The cursor is leaving trails on the screen as it is moved.
This is an issue with your display driver's OpenGL settings. There are several things that you may
need to try to resolve this. They are:
Note: You will need to close and restart SmartCAM after each change to see the effects.
Update your Video Card Driver
Make sure you are running with the most recent drivers for your video card. Updating to current
drivers often resolves a number of display problems.
Change your Active Profile
Open your Display Properties control panel, select the Settings tab, and pick the Advanced button. When the
dialog opens, select the tab for your video card. For some video cards and driver versions, these
settings are contained an a separate Control Panel applet. The applet name is usually the name of the
video card. Additionally, some vendors install the configuration utility in the Windows quick start section
of the Start menu bar.
Note: The settings and user interface for this tab (and related tabs)
varies depending upon video card, video chipset, driver type, driver version, and Windows version so we
cannot give you the exact picks to make.
Find the section related to Performance or Quality. There is usually a method, such as a drop-down list, for
changing the driver's application profile or optimized application. An application profile is simply a
pre-configured collection of driver settings and options tailored for a particular application or
application type. In the list of options, try any profile related to CAD or CAM. Users have had success
with profiles configured for AutoCAD, Inventor, Solidworks, Remote View, Think Design, and UGS Teamcentre Engineering.
You will need to close and restart your SmartCAM application each time you change the profile, before the
results will be seen.
Reduce the level of hardware acceleration being used.
Open your Display Properties control panel and select the Settings tab. Pick the Advanced button. When the
new dialog opens, select the Troubleshoot tab. There is a slider that controls the level of hardware acceleration
used. Reduce this value one notch from Full.
Continue to reduce by one notch at a time. Checking SmartCAM after each application.
If this does not resolve the problem, you can increase the support back to Full.
Manual Changes
If none of the pre-configured profiles work, the next step is to manually change the settings. The goal is to
get as many of the driver options set to 'application controlled' as possible.
Somewhere on your driver panel is a method to set the default values for a number of different
driver options; such as Antialiasing settings or Anisotropic filtering. Locate this areas. Check each setting
and where possible force the system to use application-controlled values. After changing the setting or
group of settings, press Apply. To see if it resolved the problem, restart your SmartCAM application and
test.
For NVidia Quadro drivers, customers have reported that the Buffer Flipping mode needs to be in
"Use Block Transfers" mode, not "Auto Select". This is under the "Manage
3D Settings" heading.
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