Zoom issue, 4K scaling, VW2013, dxdiag.txt

[anarablehill]

This is for VW 2013

 

I recently bought a new laptop. The dxdiag.txt is attached. It doesn't have a dedicated graphics card. I'm having an issue where once I zoom scroll the screen stops updating. The menus and cursor work ok, but the drawing area is frozen and I have to restart the application. I know my graphics chip hasn't had good performance but I'd assume I could manage simple lines which is all I really need on my laptop for roughing out basic dimensions.

 

Drop down menus on 4k are tiny. Some menus are clipped so you can only see half the values. I have my windows scaling set to 200% (225% is recommended) but upping it didn't seem to help. Any 4K setup tips would be welcomed.

DxDiag.txt

[LarryO]

I'll start be stating the obvious, that they (Vectorworks development team) have not supported embedded graphics processors.

If the graphics memory management in the hardware is fouling up the application's memory support systems there is not much that can be done.

As for the 4K screen setting I view it as counter productive for such small screen sizes. Unless you are operating a large external monitor the menu text will be unreasonably small as you have noted. In my understanding of how the graphics processors operate, a dense pixel setting such as 4K has to manage four times more memory than 2K and sixteen times more than 1K. If the system software is needed magnify everything prior to graphics processing the result I would think is a lower end resolution (2K) using CPU time and additional memory to do so. Because your system doesn't have discrete graphics processing (with dedicated VRAM) that memory is reserved from the main memory bank leaving less for your applications to work with.

[Jesse Cogswell]

Piggy backing on what @LarryO  has said, 4K might not be the best idea.  You could try dialing down the resolution of your machine rather than changing the scaling, which would require less processing and will make the application GUI more legible.  The easy way to do this is to right-click on the computer's desktop and select Display Settings.  Then select your primary display (it should already be selected if it's the only display), and change the Display Resolution setting to something like 1920x1080.  It might depend on the machine's aspect ratio, 1920x1080 is a 16:9 ratio, so if something looks off, then try some of the other options in that range.  You will also want to set the Scale to 100% with that resolution.

 

If you do want to keep your resolution at 4K, there is another possible fix to get Vectorworks to behave better on a 4K display.  Vectorworks didn't get proper high DPI scaling until 2016 or 2017, as high resolution displays were incredibly rare in 2013, but Windows 10 has a method of controlling high DPI scaling that might fix your menus.  To get to it, follow the steps below:

1. Open up the Start Menu
2. Locate Vectorworks 2013 and right click on its tile
3. Under the "More" menu, select Open File Location
4. In a File Explorer window, you should now see a shortcut to the .exe file for Vectorworks.  Right-click on it and select Properties
5. In the Compatibility tab, click on the button marked Change high DPI settings
6. Click on the checkbox in the High DPI scaling override box, and try out the different options in the drop-down menu (System would be my first choice).

I was using VW2015 when I got my first machine with a high res display and took forever to get Vectorworks to not have "an interface for ants."  Back then, Windows didn't have an easy solution, you had to build an external manifest file for each application that needed to be scaled and futz around with the system registry to even get close.  I still run Adobe Photoshop CS5, which also doesn't have high res scaling, so I have to use the High DPI scaling override with it.

[anarablehill]

To fix the zoom crashing I disabled Enhanced Navigation Graphics in VW Preferences. The High DPI scaling override did the trick for legibility and I didn't need to lower the res to something lower/16:9. Thanks for your thoughtful responses!

Edited May 24, 2021 by anarablehill