topic Re: toolbar / cursor size in Modeling

toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:19:26 GMT

I just switched to ArchiCAD from AutoCAD, and I'm struggling with the minuscule icons on the toolbars and the near-invisible cursor.

I've turned on the text descriptions for the toolbars, but that's not practical/space efficient; increasing the Windows display resolution just makes the image horribly blocky -- I really need larger icons, surely this is possible in a mature program like ArchiCAD??

the other issue is the cursor size -- the default Windows pointer is visible when the mouse is over a toolbar/menu, but at all others times, it switches to custom Graphisoft cursors, which are giving me migraines from eyestrain to see -- I'd like to be able to increase the cursor, or at least have some kind of cross-hairs option??

help please!!

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:16:16 GMT

Just out of curiosity: what is the size of your display and the resolution you are using?

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:45:38 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
Just out of curiosity: what is the size of your display and the resolution you are using?

DELL 3007WFP on NVidia GeForce 9800GT

resolution set to 2560 x 1600 -- that's the native res. I've tried lower res, but linework and text all looks horribly blurred.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Brett Brown — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:18:52 GMT

I have a 30" screen set at that resolution. I'm using Win7 and have the Display set at 125%. i.e. Control Panel/Appearance and Personalization/Display. Screen Perfect in Archicad.

Only down side is that the Tool tips in Archicad don't work. Very Annoying. Graphisoft know about the bug, and I was told it wasn't a priority to fix.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:15:54 GMT

Brett wrote:
I have a 30" screen set at that resolution. I'm using Win7 and have the Display set at 125%. i.e. Control Panel/Appearance and Personalization/Display. Screen Perfect in ArchiCAD.
Only down side is that the Tool tips in ArchiCAD don't work. Very Annoying. Graphisoft know about the bug, and I was told it wasn't a priority to fix.

Brett -- You're no doubt aware, not all human beings are made as 'perfect' as some others, even more of us mortals become less 'perfect' as they age -- What may function as well as if the hand of god had fashioned it for you, may be not equally ideal for every other person who uses it.

I've tried the 125% scaling, and it may be an effect of the video driver, Windows XP, or a peculiarity with Dell screens, but the anti-aliasing is quite awful from a normal viewing distance ~30cm.
I've also noticed the tooltips not working on numerous occasions, but even when they do work, waiting for them to appear (at least in XP) is so slow it makes them pretty unusable.

Autodesk's toolbar icons are between 2x to 4x the size of the equivalent Graphisoft icons, and they are graphically redesigned regularly for maximum legibility, .
There has been an argument running for 3 years about the drawbacks of the 'ribbon' interface which is slowly becoming the norm, and certainly on small screens (1024x768 or less) it is not a practical feature. however, in professional design, where screen sizes/resolution is at the top of the technological tree, there is everything to be gained and little drawback to ribbon-style dynamically-sized icons -- they are a huge benefit to most users for a range of reasons.

I am not advocating ArchiCAD change to that mode, I would simply like some way to make the icons more readable, without resorting to Microsoft Magnify or something similar. Similarly, a way to increase the cursor size would be massively beneficial to me and many other users with ageing eyes -- who needs more eye-strain than staring at a screen for 50hrs a week, without having to squint as well?

Should anyone know a plugin/hack/skinning tool that can give the desired effect, I would love to hear about it.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Brett Brown — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:30:04 GMT

krzystoff wrote:
I've tried the 125% scaling, and it may be an effect of the video driver, Windows XP, or a peculiarity with Dell screens, but the anti-aliasing is quite awful from a normal viewing distance ~30cm.

Try turning off 2D Hardware Acceleration which in turn turns off Antialiasing. Works for me

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:23:53 GMT

Brett wrote:
krzystoff wrote:
I've tried the 125% scaling, and it may be an effect of the video driver, Windows XP, or a peculiarity with Dell screens, but the anti-aliasing is quite awful from a normal viewing distance ~30cm.
Try turning off 2D Hardware Acceleration which in turn turns off Antialiasing. Works for me

as suggested, I tried disabling 2D acceleration with the scaling, but the window text is all that is scaled, the icons remain the same size.

autodesk's interface changes somewhat, but in archicad nothing changes much at all.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:33:44 GMT

Until this issue is resolved, there is a trick on Window you can do to increase the font sizes in ArchiCAD.
Check out this link:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=14968

The place to look for AC13 is :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Graphisoft\ArchiCAD\ArchiCAD 13.0.0 INT R1\Font Description

There are three kind of fonts you can change: large, Small and Extra Small.
After such a modification, I think you will have to restart ArchiCAD for the changes to take effect.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:48:57 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
Until this issue is resolved, there is a trick on Window you can do to increase the font sizes in ArchiCAD.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Graphisoft\ArchiCAD\ArchiCAD 13.0.0 INT R1\Font Description

There are three kind of fonts you can change: large, Small and Extra Small.
After such a modification, I think you will have to restart ArchiCAD for the changes to take effect.

thanks very much Laszlo -- that's a huge help, particularly on my 30" work monitor (ironicaly on my 22" at home it's much easier to read, with the obvious drawbacks of minimal space to work on).
I can't help wonder why the font size and style isn't available in the options -- after even simple software notepad and outlook have that feature -- perhaps a throwback to the old MacforDummies attitude ?

too bad there's no obvious way to change icon and cursor size.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Barry Kelly — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:59:54 GMT

Do I remember correctly that back in about version 6.5 there was an option for enlarging the toolbars and palettes?
This was back when they were a fixed shape.
Must have been dumped when they became stretchable.
Barry.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Gerald Hoffman — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 04:43:45 GMT

Barry wrote:
Do I remember correctly that back in about version 6.5 there was an option for enlarging the toolbars and palettes?
This was back when they were a fixed shape.
Must have been dumped when they became stretchable.
Barry.

Barry, I don't remember if it was 6.5 or not but we did have that option at some time in the past. It was rather handy as I recall. I also would like to see some ability to change icon and cursor size.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:19:58 GMT

Barry wrote:
Do I remember correctly that back in about version 6.5 there was an option for enlarging the toolbars and palettes?
This was back when they were a fixed shape.
Must have been dumped when they became stretchable.
Barry.

by 'stretchable' you mean they can be reshaped, but not resized ??

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Barry Kelly — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:25:07 GMT

krzystoff wrote:
by 'stretchable' you mean they can be reshaped, but not resized ??

Yes reshaped is what I meant.
Barry.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

KeesW — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:05:49 GMT

I seem to remember that Autocad had (has?) a cursor comprising a cross of full length and height lines. Very clear, even on a cluttered screen. I don't think that we can create this in ArchiCad but sometimes wish that we could.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:20:13 GMT

KeesW wrote:
I seem to remember that Autocad had (has?) a cursor comprising a cross of full length and height lines. Very clear, even on a cluttered screen. I don't think that we can create this in ArchiCad but sometimes wish that we could.

You are in luck! This was introduced in AC13 I believe. Activate the ruler ('View' > 'Ruler') and right click on it to bring up a little menu. Select 'cursor projection' to turn this on. You can then turn off the rulers and the cursor will remain. I can't find anywhere in the standard work environment where you can just turn this on without first activating the ruler, but you can easily add the button to any toolbar or menu (maybe the on-screen view options?).

Personally I find it quite distracting, but try it out to see if it helps!

Re: toolbar / cursor size

KeesW — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 12:04:43 GMT

Thank you Peter. I too have trouble finding the Archicad standard cursor on my 27" screen when the screen is cluttered with stuff. Archicad's 'ruler' technique is obviously designed to do what we want - i.e. create full horizontal and vertical extension lines and it works!

Since you are so wise, can you also tell us how we can change the colour of the hor & vert cursor lines to make them even more visible? I've checked the obvious places, including the OS' mouse settings.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Barry Kelly — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 03:41:03 GMT

KeesW wrote:
Since you are so wise, can you also tell us how we can change the colour of the hor & vert cursor lines to make them even more visible? I've checked the obvious places, including the OS' mouse settings.

I don't think you can.
It is just a dotted black line - a bit like the marquee.
I don't know of any control over the colour or line style.

I thought it may be linked with the grid line colour but it seems not.

Barry.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

Stress Co_ — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 19:58:28 GMT

KeesW wrote:
I too have trouble finding the Archicad standard cursor on my 27" screen when the screen is cluttered with stuff.

I'm not on a PC... but does THIS HELP ?

Re: toolbar / cursor size

sinceV6 — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 20:55:45 GMT

Barry wrote:
KeesW wrote:
Since you are so wise, can you also tell us how we can change the colour of the hor & vert cursor lines to make them even more visible? I've checked the obvious places, including the OS' mouse settings.
I don't think you can.
It is just a dotted black line - a bit like the marquee.
I don't know of any control over the colour or line style.

I thought it may be linked with the grid line colour but it seems not.

Barry.

Feedback graphics color (on-screen options) control these (and any other that falls in the category, such as the stretchy line when dragging). I set mine to red (highlights on selection and element pre-selection are also red). Really pops out what you're doing.

Cheers.

Re: toolbar / cursor size

__archiben — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 22:11:33 GMT

Barry wrote:
I don't think you can.
It is just a dotted black line - a bit like the marquee.
I don't know of any control over the colour or line style.

I thought it may be linked with the grid line colour but it seems not.

Feedback graphics in the WE:

Work Environment... > User Preference Schemes > On-screen Options