Hi, I’m looking into getting a new monitor, and thinking of getting the Dell U3415w. Anyone have experience with this monitor or something similar?
+1 for not buying 4K monitor - those can be real pain in the a… with Rhino 5 and Adobe CC.
I have a ultrawide 35" and LOVE it. It’s a none curved IPS from aoc and I presume the Dell is even better.
I’ve had a Dell P2815Q 4K for several years and it works great with my Nvidia Quadro K4000 for Rhino and Photoshop. Of course, the Rhino I’ve been using is the V6 WIPs.
I keep up to date with drivers, currently on 385.54. I’ve never had a WIP issue traceable to my video card or drivers.
I would say that for a monitor purchase today 4K (or if you have unlimited sources of money: the new Dell 8K 
) is the only way to go. There’s no substitute for more pixels when it comes to seeing what you’re doing with a model.
Personally I don’t see the need for 4k on monitors smaller than 32".
I have a UHD 28" (2560x1440) one one computer which is superb and the 3840x1440 ultrawide with a 24" fullhd on the side on an other, which also is superb as the pixel density goes well with both Windows, Rhino and the other software I use.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but perceiving and enjoying the difference probably depends on the individuals’s visual acuity.
I think the main difference is at what point you need to start zooming in to see what you want to see. I (usually) like seeing as much surrounding model as I can while working on small details, just to maintain context.
I have these, I cannot imaging ever going back to less than 4K, or using it in anything larger than 30” for a monitor. Rhino, Adobe, everything works just fine with them.
As you say it is all about personal taste and ergonomics. I have always been looking for larger screens and higher resolutions, but I still don’t think the software is mature enough for high quality scaling to ultra high res, but that said, I love the 35" UWHD monitor, so it is all a matter of finding the right combinations. In example if I use the 15" retina for Rhino5 then stuff just is a bit blurry. It works just fine, but it isn’t perfect, so I prefer pixel sharp images over badly scaled stuff (It’s just fidelity and not a big thing, but then again I could not stand working on ATI (AMD)'s AA in Rhino either… 
On the other hand I LOVE typing on it as the textediting is ultrasharp as you can see if you compare “Untiteled - Rhinoceros 5.0 No” to “File Edit View Curve Surf”: (For some reason it is shown scaled up here on the NG)
Cheers!
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New laptops (e.g., ThinkPad P51 and ThinkPad P71) also have 4K resolution. By the way, 4K is suitable for CAD work, but 4K videos are jittery.
I think I have the same one by Dell, but my issue is related to this particular dpi. Windows is set to 150% scaling which is very comfortable and works well within Windows, however Rhino 5 and vRay 3.4 UI don’t handle it well at all. Some features are upscaled, some don’t, values disappearing and Grasshopper components created on fullHD 100% monitor collide one with another. Rhino 6 however works like a charm.
In Photoshop CC 2018, there is no 150% scale option so one can only choose 100% which makes all UI text about 1 mm high and very painful to read. Setting it to 200% should mean that UI size is about the same like on fullHD, however, it doesn’t really work that way and for example, the Color panel with huge rainbow of colours gets stretched so tall it uses almost whole heigh of the monitor.
Personally I was disappointed that, especially Photoshop, doesn’t seem ready for 4K at all.
Jonas
This strikes me as odd, frankly…
It’s almost 2018. Going forward, something is either wrong with your software versions or your OS configuration. (Yes, I realize Rhino 5 Win blew way too long with 4K.)
I regularly use a 32” 4K display, and a 27” 5k iMac, in both MacOS and Win (less frequently) with Rhino and CC, etc. No going back!
The 4K is great (way way better than old school) and the 5k is simply stunning.
Seriously, if I sit at someone’s “old school” pixel density display, the first thing that comes to mind is - WTF, this blows, poor bastard.
I have to admit I feel kinda helpless. What scaling do you use? My problem is that while monitors get better dpi, my eyes have the opposite tendency, so while using 100% scaling I would need to have curved screen positioned like 30 cm from my face. 150% is comfy but as I said, not supported in Photoshop CC 2018 and buggy in Rhino 5.
(Now that I’m thinking of it, tomorrow when I get to work, I should try to use it without the secondary fullHD monitor attached. Maybe two monitors running on different scaling confuse Rhino.)
What Windows version?
…I think here is the difference in experience from mine to what Jonish first had mentioned. I only work in Rhino 6, for almost a year now. Some of my icons so looks blurry but that’s because they are old/small. Most importantly the viewport looks great and averyghing is just a snagit screenshot away to copy-pasty in any presentation, email, Basecamp post.
Thanks everyone for the opinions. I currently have a Dell U3011, which is 30" and 2560x1600. More pixel density might not make much difference to me b/c my eyesight isn’t perfect anymore. My real goal is to be able to run Rhino with 5 views (one big window who’s view I can switch with function keys, and four standard smaller windows.) Right now the shape of my screen just makes that unworkable, but the proportions of the Dell U3415w seem like they’d work. Probably the biggest issue is that when I travel I will have to switch back to using my laptop screen, and so I’ll have to set up two ways to work (and two sets of scripts for viewport-swapping)- one for the wide screen setup and one for the laptop.
I guess the main take-away for me from the comments here is that this screen should work fine with Rhino, which is really what I needed to know.
I use a Samsung Monitor U32D970Q with 3840 x 2160 and Rhino 5 daily. I never want to go back. I’m very happy with Rhino 5 on this screen. Also I recommend not to use a higher pixel density for image editing since I like to control the sharpness at pixel level. And for me 32" is a good size, doesn’t feel the display is to big.
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What graphics card do you have? Have you noticed delay when spinning big models?
Big models are slow, but I think it’s not a question of the monitor, it’s a Rhino 5 software bottle neck. I used a GTX780 for a long time, now a GTX1080ti. Both cards was never full used. Rhino 6 will be the best solution.
GPU-Z is a free utility program which displays graphics card performance. I downloaded it from here: https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/
I set-up the GPU-Z utility to display its window on top of Rhino 5 window, I displayed single perspective viewport in Rhino, and I quickly tumbled simple model in the viewport. GPU-Z reported about 20% GPU load. (BBox display was turned off.) It seems that 4K monitor would not degrade Rhino 5 performance. I have Quadro K2000M graphics card and 1920x1080 LCD in my laptop computer. The following image is the GPU screenshot.
Having spent about 2 hours reading CAD monitor reviews, I believe that:
Dell U2718Q is the best inexpensive 4K monitor: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073VYVX5S/
LG 27UD58-B is the best very inexpensive 4K monitor: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IRQAYPE
One consideration often overlooked when moving to 4K is the impact on 3D performance. With four times as many pixels to render on screen as FHD, your GPU has to work a lot harder. In some cases, frame rates can slow down dramatically, making it hard to quickly and accurately re-position 3D CAD models on screen. This is not only annoying but can significantly impact productivity… When working on parts and small assemblies in SolidWorks and Fusion, performance was largely unaffected by the step up to 4K across all GPUs. However, with some larger models, particularly when realistic materials and shadows were enabled, frame rates slowed down dramatically with entry-level graphics cards like the Nvidia Quadro K620 and AMD FirePro W4100. Autodesk VRED, which has an emphasis on extreme visual quality inside the viewport, was an entirely different proposition. We experienced a significant slowdown at 4K even when using high-end GPUs, such as the Quadro M5000. Using a detailed automotive model, performance when moving from FHD to 4K dropped by as much as 65% with standard anti-aliasing and 85% without anti-aliasing set to high. source: http://www.develop3d.com/workstations/cad-on-4k-displays-ultra-high-resolution-3D
Looking to use a Samsung Monitor U32D970Q as well. Glad it works great