Archicad 26 and DPI issue on 4K monitors under Windows 11

[Paul King]

Has anyone solved the issue of ArchicCAD 26 displaying with 'fatter' lower resolution linework than earlier versions on same workstation (i.e. same hardware, same Windows version, same graphics driver etc) ?

This is with Archicad 26 version 4019 and using same 'Advanced Redraw Options' settings in Archicad 26 as with Archicad 24.

The consequence is that adjacent linework in detailed areas visually merges together into a blob far sooner than it normally does when zooming out, and small differences in line weight are hard or impossible to distinguish.

[Paul King]

Hi, 'I feel your pain' as they say, but if you read the full thread above, there is a solution, and an explanation included (The graphics engine is tuned for small monitor scaling).  There is probably no problem with your graphics card or hardware.

For me, after performing the suggested registry tweak, ArchiCAD 26 looks fine again.

The only remaining issue being that the mouse pointer is tiny.

[MASz]

This is still an issue in Archicad 27.

I lodged in ac27 beta, they didnt fix it and it took a lot of encouragement (to put it mildly) getting them to recognise it as a still existing problem. At this point i still have no idea if they'll actually fix it in 28. Not that that's acceptable anyway, it is a major bug that should be fixed in Archicad 26 and 27.

Here is the claim from Graphisoft:

"The DEF-9464 bug was fixed back in AC 26, and we did not get complaints for a few months.

The scaling should be set to 100% to fix the issue as far as I know. Other workarounds are resetting the Registry Editor (which might be the best) and turning off 2D antialiasing."

The bug is not fixed. They have tried to fix it and have changed the behaviour of it, but it still a bug. It is never acceptable for Graphisoft to suggest that display scaling should be set to 100%. This is unusable in a lot of set ups, for instance laptops with higher resolutions or 4k+ monitors. Display scaling is a totally normal, recommended feature of Windows. Archicad 22 was supposed to solve all this. Workarounds are not solutions either, and even Graphisoft generally advise you not to use RenderingAPI -1. I do not know why it was acceptable to launch in this state, nor why Graphisoft consistently screws up when it comes to display scaling. It suggests they do not do their own testing correctly and have repeatedly failed from a quality control perspective. It also raises questions about Archicad support providing misinformation to customers.

I have suggested that there should be a toggle in work environment for the 2d drawing infrastructure, Given that it is bugged and the registry entry is not obvious. This was ignored.

It goes beyond looking blobby and blurry, linework doesn't even connect properly. You need to get an accurate display of your 2d drawings to be able to work effectively.

If display scaling were to work correctly, then the drawings should look same regardless of what display scaling you have set Windows to. This is the case with the old drawing infrastructure. If you set display scaling to 350% for instance, then that really demonstrates the problems with the scaling. I have attached an example.

And no, it is not valid to say "well 350% is set too high". The point of this exercise is to clearly demonstrate the erroneous scaling behaviour and it should be easily reproducible by anyone using Windows, regardless of display.