Fusion 360 + High DPI display

[ormandj]

Hi,

Fusion 360 + a high DPI display does not appear to work well. I'm attaching screenshots to illustrate the issue (cut off text, tiny text, etc). Are there plans to rectify this? Windows 8.1 is the OS. I'm happy to take SS/provide data as possible to help. Resolution is 2560x1440 on this display.

http://ormandj.corenode.com/images/cad/360/f360-1.png

http://ormandj.corenode.com/images/cad/360/f360-2.png

http://ormandj.corenode.com/images/cad/360/f360-3.png

Here is what the above looks like with screen to give some idea of scale:

photograph of screen

[bob_holland]

@ormandj,

Welcome to the Fusion forum and thank you for using Fusion 360.

Can you please send us a DxDiag Report off of your machine.

I have attached a PDF to assist if needed.

Thank you.

[ormandj]

Hi,

I have PM'd a link to the DxDiag.txt as per your request. Thank you for looking into this!

Respectfully,

David

[bob_holland]

@ormandj,

Please send me your DxDiag Report via a Private Message.

Thank you.

[bob_holland]

@ormandj,

I believe the issue is with:

System DPI Setting: 192 DPI (200 percent)

In Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display please set your

Custom Text Size (DPI) to 100% and test.

Thank you.

[ormandj]

Hi Bob,

Setting this to 100% does make Fusion 360 look correct, however all fonts are now unreadably small on the display. I will take a picture of the screen with the tip of a pen near a character for reference of size.

http://ormandj.corenode.com/images/cad/360/text-pen-100-scale.jpg

Thank you,

David

[bob_holland]

@ormandj,

Please try setting to 150 and let me know if that does the trick.

Thank you.

[ormandj]

The font size is more useable at 150% (but still small), however now appears clipped in Fusion 360 like the original screenshots/photo displayed. It looks like the graphical elements that contain the text in Fusion 360 are not scaling with the text size, hence the issue with the text being cut off when it is enlarged. Oddly enough, there appears to be plenty of 'space' for the extra text in the boxes, it's just being cut off at some invisible boundry point.

[bob_holland]

@ormandj,

Please try setting your resolution to 1920 x 1080.

What version of windows are you utilizing?

Thank you.

[ormandj]

Setting my resolution lower is not an option I am willing to choose; that would remove all benefits of the higher resolution panel (2560x1440) in this laptop running at a non-native 1920 x 1080, and makes the display look quite terrible. I believe this is why Microsoft implemented the font scaling (to address small font sizes at higher resolutions as these panels are becoming more and more common), it just appears Fusion 360 does not play nicely with this scaling (which would appear to be a bug, as other applications are working properly with scaling enabled). I'm running Windows 8.1 64-bit edition. I do very much appreciate your time and effort in working with me on this, but lowering the display resolution isn't a workable solution to this bug for me (or I'm sure others with high DPI displays).

[bob_holland]

@ormandj,

Thank you for using Fusion 360.

I will bring this to our developers attention so that they can address this in a future release.

I was just trying to find you a workable environment.

Thank you again for bringing this to our attention.

[ormandj]

Hi Bob,

Your assistance was certainly appreciated. I will change the font settings to 100% when I use Fusion 360 then back to default when I am not. That will be a good compromise until the bug can be fixed. Have a great day, and thank you again. I was certainly not expecting this level of service on a community forum, it's a breath of fresh air in the CAD world!

[Anonymous]

Just would like to say this is an issue for me to.  I have a retina MacBook Pro and am somtimes in OSX, sometimes in Windows 10.  Both operating systems (and most modern programs now that I think of it) scale UI elements, not just text, to be a reasonable size in a high DPI environment.  This is just the way of the future.  Needs to be managed by the application.  I'm suprised with the newness of this program and the popularity of high DPI displays, this would have been considered already.

It would be nice to hear the official word on future support for high end diplays.

[Anonymous]

Just been hit with this myself on a Surface Book! Any updates?

[nkloski]

Sometimes when messing around with scaling, you have to log out and log back in...not sure if that will help but it is something to try. This is definitely something I have to do when using my Surface attached to a high-dpi external monitor....but that is a long standing Windows problem.

It got a little better with Windows 10, but the log/logout thing still has to be done sometimes for me.

[Anonymous]

Hey, thanks for the reply - unfortunately this is on the native Surface Book display, which is a hi-dpi display (3000x2000). Havent changed the scaling in the month since i set the device up.

In this case its the app not handling scaling properly.

[Anonymous]

I'm a developer and my clients run into these issues all the time. Usually Windows will work correctly at 150% and 200%.  On the other hand it will fail at 125% or 175%.  On the development side, in Visual Studio you can set a property to take care of this.  However for Java? Don't know.

Of course having a high DPI monitor on a small screen never makes sense.  If you need to run at 200% then your desktop real estate is the same as at 19209x1080. 

Best solution is to do what I did.  I bought a Seiki 39" 4K TV for $360.  Run 100% and font size and everything are just perfect.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous

You say high DPI on a small screen doesn't make sense.  Then why are the most premium laptops coming with high DPI displayes more and more often?  They make perfect sense, and scaling to 200% isn't the same as halving the resolution.  Scaled elements still render at high DPI.  The result is a beautiful, "retina" quality image with graphical elements you can still read.  It is the way of today, and all too often it is dismissed by developers as not relevant.  There was another thread about this where an Autodesk developer got involved and made it pretty clear that improvements aren't on the radar for the Windows version of Fusion 360.  I'm sure they'll change their mind the more posts the see like this.

Fusion works wonderfully on my high DPI MacBook pro when in OSX.  So, it is possible to get it right.  Just takes the desire to do so.  The motivation comes from demand, and demand is increasing with every high end laptop announcement.  Now Microsoft is manufacturing quality hardware with high DPI displays so change can't be far off.  Again, if the developers would comment it would sure help us understand Autodesk's take on this.

High DPI makes perfect sense, and most of the industry has already embraced it.

[nkloski]

Yep, I agree... I have nothing but High DPI displays on my desktop screens
as well as my laptop.

[Anonymous]

I guess, I didn't explain myself...

High DPI displays for the desktop don't make any sense.  There you have to run at 200% scaling otherwise any text is too small.  Your retina display runs at 200%. Try tyo set it at 100%...you will see 4 times as much on yuour display.  But, all text will be too small. Sure it's pretty and all but there's not much benefit on the desktop if you have a small display. Anything that is not graphics based is just double in size. I have the same thing with a Dell XPS 15.  It comes with a 4K screen.  Applications that are not graphics based must run at 200% so there is no benefit in terms of increased desktop landscape.

However with graphics, I find that I could live without such high resolution on such a small display.  On a large monitor it's another story.  Very nice.