Object Inspect Tool & Autosnap Setting

The object inspect tool a great tool, if you can get it to work. I have been challenged recently to get this to work. Here is what has been going on. On some people’s computers it works, on others it does not. It could be working on someone’s computer for awhile and then just quit working. It is independent of the profile, the template, and whether or not you are using ABS 2007 or ADT 2007. Due to those tests that I ran I had a hunch it was a system variable or some toggle somewhere under the Options/Drafting tab, aka it was specific to the individual computer.

What I mean by not working: you could select the object inspect tool and hover over an item, but no text balloon would show up with the information, but the command was active.

Thanks to some help from the people on AUGI I have found out what the toggle/system variable is that affects it. AUTOSNAP. This was a variable that I had never heard of. OOTB it should be set to 63.

From the help section here are the settings for Autosnap: 0 = Off all, 1 = marker on, 2 = snap tip on, 4 = magnetic cursor on, 8 = polar tracking on, 16 = object snap tracking on, and 32 = tool tips for polar and object snap tracking on.

Now if you add all of these together (0+1+2+4+8+16+32) it equals 63. Interesting.

I went around to various computers and found these numbers for autosnap: 1, 5, 17, 39, 47, and 55. I know that my users do not know about this system variable, nor do they know how to directly change it’s setting. Interestingly enough anyone who had a number above and including 30 the object inspect tool worked on their computers.

If you turn on and off items such as osnap or otrack the autosnap value will change.
So how do you insure that you always have a high enough number for your autosnap setting in order to keep the object inspect tool working? I just don’t know yet. I’ll update this post with new information when I find out!

Also just to note…I verified that in the Options/Drafting tab the following were all checked/selected: Marker, Magnet, and Display Autosnap tool tip.