Circuit Studio on 4k monitors

[mrtn]

I've had a laptop with a 4k resolution monitor for over a year now and it's still difficult to use a lot of software. I was hoping when Circuit Studio came out that I'd have better luck since it's (theoretically) newer software. Still having some pretty annoying UI problems. These images are from Circuit Studio schematic Libraries toolbar.

First image is the libraries toolbar. It's not unusable but the fonts are all different sizes and it looks really ugly. Bitmap icons have to be scaled or you end up with the situation in the first image where the icons are microscopic and the text is 10x bigger.

Second image just points out where the third image comes from. I click on the drop-down button to select an installed library... and get image #3 which is the selection box for the installed libraries. Can't scroll and the list takes up the whole height of my screen. Really annoying.

[Harvs]

Yes it's terrible isn't it!

I switched to using a MS Surface Pro as my main workstation because of the amount I'm on the road. I really think it's a Windows scaling issue as pretty much all apps except those created with newer frameworks are rubbish.

The scaling issues in Win10 are vast. I even have to reboot after unplugging or plugging in external monitors because Win10 can't re-adjust it's scaling and everything becomes unusable (even chrome!)

Unfortunately while CS is "newer" software, it's based on a legacy system.  All the dialogs etc are from AD, and I have no doubt still use the same code base and gui framework as AD.

I just always use external monitors where I can.

[DimitriP]

You could wait for the software you need to use to get rewritten/adjusted/modified or get your hands on a laptop with more sensible resolution that behaves properly...

[Simon]

how big is the laptop ? I use a 27" 4K monitor with a windows magnification of 175% and most things work fine but I don't have circuit studio (Proteus is fine on the 4K monitor) I have a 15.6" full HD laptop and when you think of it the pixels per inch are not much lower than my 27" 4K monitor.

As my new laptop seems pretty powerful possibly more so than my desktop (but for the swanky graphics card) I am now finding myself plugging my 4K monitor into my laptop when I get home to my desk and everthing runs fine. I have set the external monitor to be the main one and when I shut the lid on the laptop it's like having a desktop that uses a fraction of the power.

[mrtn]

You could wait for the software you need to use to get rewritten/adjusted/modified or get your hands on a laptop with more sensible resolution that behaves properly...

I have a few computers so it's not the issue. I just wanted to point out the flaws.
If I had no other choice but to use this laptop I would not be happy with the combination of 4k monitor with Circuit Studio.

how big is the laptop ? I use a 27" 4K monitor with a windows magnification of 175% and most things work fine but I don't have circuit studio (Proteus is fine on the 4K monitor) I have a 15.6" full HD laptop and when you think of it the pixels per inch are not much lower than my 27" 4K monitor.

It's around 16 or 17"
I can run half the resolution but then it ends up being a bit small in the 'x' dimension. (and it looks crappy)

I do think the difficulty is that we use Windows to magnify the font size and applications aren't setup to handle the text size. I just looked: my font magnification was set to 250% which is huge. I set it to 175% and CircuitStudio looks better but I can barely read the text.

[Simon]

Well hopefully the general scree magnification setting will affect everything and make it look right on your size screen.

[kaz911]

Scaling issues are the norm on Windows 7,8 & 10 Software I have a 4K notebook as well - and it is a monkey for scaling) - and I have external screens without scaling - making it even worse...

I had lower the resolution to even INSTALL TI CCS 7.0 ... (Right Click Desktop /Display Settings / scroll down... to Advanced Display Settings)

CircuitStudio goes funny moving windows from a scaled display to non-scaled. Fonts are funny...

But most of those issues are due to lack of care from either software vendor - OR the "Language Vendor" who originated the base code for driving the screen.

OSX MacOS is a lot better at Scaling but still not perfect

[free_electron]

Don't know about circuitstudio but big altium has a setting for this for both font used and scaling. It was put in the options especially because of windows shenanigans ..

I am running it on a triplehead 2560x1600 without issues. ( plus the 1920x1080 of the laptop as fourth screen. HP Zbook with a Quadro graphics card). Works perfectly fine.
I do run Win 7 x64 enterprise though...

[karoru]

Scaling issues are the norm on Windows 7,8 & 10 Software I have a 4K notebook as well - and it is a monkey for scaling) - and I have external screens without scaling - making it even worse...

I had lower the resolution to even INSTALL TI CCS 7.0 ... (Right Click Desktop /Display Settings / scroll down... to Advanced Display Settings)

CircuitStudio goes funny moving windows from a scaled display to non-scaled. Fonts are funny...

But most of those issues are due to lack of care from either software vendor - OR the "Language Vendor" who originated the base code for driving the screen.

OSX MacOS is a lot better at Scaling but still not perfect

Even the best API won't help with people hardcoding "Arial 12" and button sizes in pixels in their software because they assume everyone has 75 dpi and the same screen resolution as UI designer. That wouldn't be that bad as autoscaling usually takes care of it but then they force non-autoscaling on half UI containers because their UI goes bananas when resized or something similar. Even in Windows 2000/XP era I had problems with crappy VB6 applications that looked like hell on 96 dpi screen. For some reason I can run Word 97 on Windows 7 on any DPI and it will still look okay - UI was written by someone who knew what he/she was doing.

Modern MacOS is very good at scaling because the UI you see is basically a PDF file, so it has nice scaling built-in.

[Simon]

In proteus you can set icon sizes so this has not been a problem for me, the resr of the fonts seem to be fine. but yes I have had programs have problems with scaling, mainly ones that are clearly old or based on old code that came before the windows scaling.

[Zbig]

Just installed the trial on my laptop with a 3200x1800 screen. I'm on Windows 10 and using 225% scaling. CS UI is a complete clusterf#ck on this configuration

[free_electron]

how big is the laptop ? I use a 27" 4K monitor with a windows magnification of 175%

people want monitors with ever smaller pixels and then crank up the font scaling ...
4k works on 40 inch screens.
for a 27 inch you run at 2650x1400. no need for font scaling ...

[Zbig]

people want monitors with ever smaller pixels and then crank up the font scaling ...
4k works on 40 inch screens.
for a 27 inch you run at 2650x1400. no need for font scaling ...

If there is technology available to have picture quality on par with good quality offset print, I'm all for it and don't see any reason to settle for less. Of course it's subject to common sense as well and I personally don't see much point (other than bragging rights) in more than say, 300 DPI equivalent but I don't want to see individual pixels on my computer screen in this day and age. Rigid mapping of UI elements and fonts to arbitrary pixel counts is a terribly outdated concept and the technology to deal with this limitation is in place since long time. I blame the mix of reliance on legacy APIs/frameworks and downplaying the problem/not caring on the Altium's side. CS's ribbon UI styling looks oddly reminiscent of Office 2010. It's inexcusable to develop and release a new piece of software in 2016 without full DPI-awarness in mind.

[Ice-Tea]

It's inexcusable to develop and release a new piece of software in 2016 without full DPI-awarness in mind.

But it is not a new piece of SW. It's bits and pieces of another piece of SW that has seen incremental evulutions for... what... 20 years?

And in all honnesty, stuff like how the UI ribbon styling looks like is very low on my "hope they improve this first" list.

[Zbig]

But it is not a new piece of SW. It's bits and pieces of another piece of SW that has seen incremental evulutions for... what... 20 years?

And in all honnesty, stuff like how the UI ribbon styling looks like is very low on my "hope they improve this first" list.

I know that the engine/backend is deeply rooted in AD but was under the impression that the UI is different enough to have been rebuilt from ground-up. I've never used AD and it seems I was wrong. Regarding Office 2010-like UI, I've not phrased it well. What I had in mind was it seems they have either used some old version of Visual Studio or some compatibility mode. What I really meant was: "it looks like Office 2010 so it seems they have built it using some very old tools, from way before the era of high-res screens and DPI-awarness as a standard".

[Ice-Tea]

Oh, probably. Not that I care much about that. If I'd have to settle for Windows 3.11 looks and an otherwise flawless experience, I'd be happy to

[Zbig]

Oh, probably. Not that I care much about that. If I'd have to settle for Windows 3.11 looks and an otherwise flawless experience, I'd be happy to

Sure, great to hear you're a happy camper My gripes are not with the looks but with the fact it's unusable on my laptop. And I was really looking forward to try and buy it at the discounted price. I really wanted to like it and got a bit hyped, hence my frustration.

[GlowingGhoul]

Zbig:

From Altium CS system requirements:


DPI Scaling Support

The following table shows the maximum DPI Scaling supported, based on the vertical resolution of the monitor being used.

Monitor Vertical Resolution (pixels)    Maximum DPI Scaling Supported

1024 to 1200    100%
1600                125%
1800                200%

So, it looks like simply reducing your scaling from 225% to 200% should take care of your issues.

[kaz911]

Zbig:

From Altium CS system requirements:


DPI Scaling Support

The following table shows the maximum DPI Scaling supported, based on the vertical resolution of the monitor being used.

Monitor Vertical Resolution (pixels)    Maximum DPI Scaling Supported

1024 to 1200    100%
1600                125%
1800                200%

So, it looks like simply reducing your scaling from 225% to 200% should take care of your issues.

It only works if all your monitors are the same resolution with 200% scaling.  My notebook is 4k @ 200% - the rest are not 4k at 100% - and moving between screens or letting CS open a window from the 100% screen that will appear on the 100% screen really gets interesting. (CS seems to make its own decisions about where to open windows on either of my external screens)

And CS is not to happy about following re-scaling - so moving main window from 100% scaled screen to  a 200% can give some issues as well.

[Zbig]

Zbig:

From Altium CS system requirements:


DPI Scaling Support

The following table shows the maximum DPI Scaling supported, based on the vertical resolution of the monitor being used.

Monitor Vertical Resolution (pixels)    Maximum DPI Scaling Supported

1024 to 1200    100%
1600                125%
1800                200%

So, it looks like simply reducing your scaling from 225% to 200% should take care of your issues.

I have tried that and it didn't solve the issue, unfortunately (even after re-login, just to be sure).

[takahidehimself]

If you can get by with the CS UI being a bit fuzzy, one solution/hack is to edit C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\CS\DXP.exe.manifest (run e.g notepad as admin) and change the value of XML element <dpiAware> from true to false. So far I haven't encountered any bugs caused by this modification.

[Zbig]

If you can get by with the CS UI being a bit fuzzy, one solution/hack is to edit C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\CS\DXP.exe.manifest (run e.g notepad as admin) and change the value of XML element <dpiAware> from true to false. So far I haven't encountered any bugs caused by this modification.

Wow, thank you so much! Earlier, I fiddled with the DXP.exe file's compatibility properties (focusing on the "Disable DPI scaling" one) but apparently if there's a .manifest file, it takes precedence over these and that's why ticking the checkbox gave no result.

@GlowingGhoul: In the response for my poor CS experience reported in the other thread, you spread wild statements about "non-standard" resolutions, Windows not having any scaling mechanism, etc., ad nauseam. While in the reality, as per takahidehimself's great tip, all you have to do is to tell the OS that the application isn't actually DPI-aware and it's anybody's guess why it's "lying" to the OS about that fact. This way you engage the built-in mechanism that resizes the UI accordingly. The mechanism that you swore left and right wasn't there. See? No need for a Mac after all