4K monitor - display issues

[w64bit]

4K monitors are on sale now and they are coming with some display issues for CAD programs.

A 24" full HD monitor, with 1920x1200, has a pixel size of 0.27 mm.

A 28" 4K monitor, with 3840x2160, has a pixel size of 0.16 mm (40% less)

The lines/plines... in AutoCAD are 1 pixel wide. On a 4K monitor they will be 40% thinner and harder to see.

Is there any setting or variable to display the lines/plines... with 2 pixels wide?

I mention that lineweight is not what I want.

[pendean]

Do you actually own or have used such monitors? It's not that dramatic to be an issue for these old eyes based on my testing.
Get some hands on time somewhere yourself, even if at a store.

[aisnikkor]

I too was thinking this 'thin line' issue would be a problem, but in a demo of a Dell 28" 4K monitor (P2815q), it was quite useable for CAD purposes.  The bigger problem is the size of the text and icons - much smaller than what you are probably used to.  The screen real estate for looking at large or complex drawings is awesome though.  Demo was with Civil 3D 2014 (where we are going) and Terramodel (where we are stuck now) Software, in addition to office, web and mapping applications.  Civil 3D scaled nicely with Windows 7 display settings, Terramodel not so well.

I still have that 28" in my office, but it is waiting for our new workstations to come in to get started using it.  Very much looking forward to putting it into use as a single monitor replcement for my current dual monitor setup.  We will be using Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit and Civil 3D 2015 going forward, for land survey and civil design purposes.

[aisnikkor]

Finally up and running with the our new workstations.  No issues with Civil 3D so far on the new hardware.  Civil 3D display on 4K resolution appears to scale up nicely with the OS display scaling settings, except for the transparent commands toolbar (which still appears to be at 100%).  This is good performance compared to many applications I have tried, which do not work as well with the Windows scaling.  I am working with the monitor at a custom scale factor of 140%.  The scale factor in the OS makes items display larger or smaller for ease of reading.  4K resolution on a 28 inch monitor, and 100% (no scaling) leaves everything REALLY small, and hard to read.  This monitor is great for looking at large drawings or large PDFs of plans or maps - the additional detail provided by the higher pixel density really helps.

[detroit808]

4K on a 28 inch is DPI 157.35. I'd say that is far too high to be usable and using scaling defeats the purpose IMO.

Too bad the LCD manufacturers are not thinking very hard about the use ability of 4K on the desktop, offering 24", 28" and 31.5" 4K is proof of that.

For practicality, and especially for AutoCAD (since it doesn't work well on dual monitors), 4K on 36 inch would be far more suitable as this would be DPI: 122.38 and 4K on 39" would be DPI: 112.97. Considering 2560x1440 16:9 on 27" or 3440x1440 21:9 on 34" is DPI: 108.79 and DPI: 109.68 respectively, we'd get a huge single display (with much more vertical height for the ribbons, statusbar, command line) to replace dual setups with font and icon sizing almost equal to what we are used to now, without OS scaling.

[chenchri]

Hi aisnikkor, 

Thanks for sharing your experience in 4K monitor. We have also researched this - It sure brings new challenges to the applications.

We are looking forard to hearing more after you have used it more in production. 

[aisnikkor]

Regarding the pixel density being 'unuseable' I would have to disagree based on actual use (survey and mapping use in my case).  I do agree that at normal viewing distances you cannot distingush individual pixels on this monitor (I am using Dell P2815Q 28"); we had to break out a magnifying glass to do that.  However, in viewing large documents in various software formats, this monitor shines.  PDF's of 18x26 and 24x36 plan sheets look better on this monitor than they do on a 11x17 paper copy from a laser printer.  There is a tangible difference in sharpness and readability of text, particularly at small sizes on screen.  I can read all the text on one of these plan sheets without panning or zooming.  Further, viewing plan sheets in Terramodel (the CAD software we are transitioning away from), the text will display much smaller than it will on a smaller monitor (it turns into geometric blocks at smaller display sizes on the smaller monitor).  This last point is hard to explain, but the point is, the higher resolution (while not visible to the naked eye) is causing the program to behave differently, and in a more useable fashion.

I do not see myself using C3D at full screen resolution on this monitor, but I do see using it over about 60% of the screen surface, and having a reference document (PDF, Excel, etc.) open side by side on the same monitor.  I am using this as a single monitor configuration at the moment (I had been on dual screens for the past 6 years or so).  Along with the higher resolution for viewing large documents, screen real estate for multiple applications on the same monitor is what this is useful for.  We are moving in our office toward electronic plan checking, and this extra resolution will be particularly valuable in that arena.

[thirdmoth]

I'm getting a wide disparity in font sizes, is there an easy adjustment for this? I'm using a Lenovo with a 4K screen. Its touchscreen, which is kindof great to use the mouse and my fingers to pan and zoom.

  Its a 15" screen so its taking time to adjust to how small the little square in the middle of the crosshairs is. Perhaps that can be embiggened, too?

  Photoshop has a single button you can click to adjust to 4K screens, it would be cool if CAD could do that, too.

[braudpat]

Hello

Unfortunately AutoCAD 201x has some strange display problem with very high resolution !

... After about more than 3000 pixels ...

So please stay with a "good" resolution like : 2560x1440 / 2560x1600

[pendean]

Since I have the same laptop, you should have also noticed how many other applications are also seriously messed up. 4k displays are way ahead of the applications. Not to mention the teeny-tiny installation pop-up texts. Lenovo emplyes sad little tricks to make WIndows 8 work: let's hope Windows 10 does this natively.

For now this tip jerry-rigs the 4k displays for many applications, including AutoCAD: http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/

[thirdmoth]

Dean that totally works and you are currently my favorite person on this planet.

[mfmaradiaga]

Hope this helps. It works for autocad and revit if your using a 4k display. under scailing setting on windows 8 just set the tooltips bar to 7or 8 and thats it. After trying different setting i found that reducing the size from 9 to 7 fixes the problem. However, It might not be the best solution but at least works for now. In autocad you might have to extend the the command bar up a little bit that way when you type a command it wont get on the way. Mysettings, on a dell precision m3800 4k. scale set to 225% and tooltips set to 7% and it works fine. if you guys have any questions feel free to contact me. mfmaradiaga@aol.com

[20172825]

I have just installed AutoCAD 2016 on my new ASUS laptop with 15.6" 4k screen and windows 10. It's a brand new computer. AutoCAD was the first thing I installed after office.

I'm having issues with some things displaying normal size, some really big and some really small (only within AutoCAD).

My ribbon is normal size.

The text above the command bar is so big, it takes over my view port and gets in the way.

But then any windows like properties, layer props, xrefs etc are so small I can't read them.

So I have tried changing the display settings in Windows. But simply making everything either bigger or smaller is not useful.

In AutoCAD's options window, I have checked "use large buttons for toolbars" and "resize ribbon icons to standard size" but this doesn't help.

I have tried changing fonts and font sizes within AutoCAD. Doesn't help.

Does anyone know of any AutoCAD settings to fix this?

Cheers,

Iain

[pendean]

Round peg in a square hole: AutoCAD knows nothing about 4k displays, so yes, Autodesk's fix is to basically eliminate the 4k display to something lower (aka bigger shapes) https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Odd-gr...

Try the tip above your posthttps://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015-2016/4k-monitor-display-issues/m-p/5620745#M80220 Or you could try the link I posted earlier here https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015-2016/4k-monitor-display-issues/m-p/5484679#M71...

[BillGlennie]

Thank you for your observations on the appearance of AutoCAD on high resolution displays. The development team is looking for comments about your experience with setting the Windows display scale to 150% or more, to accommodate newer monitors. Please take this quick survey (5 minutes), if you have tried to use AutoCAD this way.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Bill Glennie, on behalf of the AutoCAD Team

[BillGlennie]

The link below is intended to be used only once.  Here is an unlimited link:

https://autodeskfeedback.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eDqoKQe8KIZZXvf

Apologies for the error.  

Thank you,  Bill

[nacampbe]

I have an MSI Ghost 4k laptop and it is absolutley miserable using AutoCAD on this laptop. I have tried turning down the resolution but ill have to adjust it on my graphics card too just to use autoCAD. The cursor is microscopic, the words are too small or too large. AutoCAD needs to update so that the program recognizes 4k monitors, because I use CAD almost everyday, and it makes class unbearable and just hurts my head.

[nacampbe]

Windows 10 unfortunatley has not fixed these issues. I have a 4k running on 10. 

[MRADon]

*Bump* I am having the same issue.

Dual Monitors: HD (1920x1080) & 4K (3840x2160)
Windows 10
AutoCAD 17 (vanilla)

Toolbar/text size isn't the issue anymore on Windows 10

Issues: Missing (disappearing) toolbars - guess I will have to to use ribbons from now on.

[jason]

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@MRADon wrote:

*Bump* I am having the same issue.

Dual Monitors: HD (1920x1080) & 4K (3840x2160)
Windows 10
AutoCAD 17 (vanilla)

Toolbar/text size isn't the issue anymore on Windows 10

Issues: Missing (disappearing) toolbars - guess I will have to to use ribbons from now on.

---

Install 2017.1.  Not SP1, 2017 point 1.