V6 and high-resolution displays

hello steve,

thanks a lot for your statement and for clearing the situation!

i was hoping for adjustable text size in dialog boxes and the menu (as possible with the command line).

currently i am using rhino 5 on a dell 32" display @ 2560x1600. the distance between my eyes and the monitor is ~ 80-90 cm, which proved to be the best position for me from an ergonomic POV in the past 10 years to avoid eye/neck strain and computer fatigue.
during the last 3-4 years i experienced deteriorating eyesight which makes it unavoidable to use glasses for reading books or newspapers. to the present day i can do my computer work without glasses and i am trying to maintain this state as long as possible.
in the past few weeks i sometimes realise having a hard time reading adobe (CS5) menues, which are slightly smaller than rhinoĀ“s and when now switching to another hardware configuration and from rhino 5 to 6, i am trying to create a setup as customizable as possible.

as an example (maybe a little bit extreme):
i even considered trying samsungĀ“s CHG90 curved 49" monitor which is effectively the size two 27" side-by-side. this could be an interesing solution for heavy grasshopper use or other multi-app situations. unfortunately it runs at 3840x1080, which sounds a little bit cheesy. when using a monitor like this one, stepless adjustment of the elements discribed above would mean a real advantage, as with 1080 pixels in height even a downscaling option could become desirable.

steve, would rhino 6 recognize a screen resolution of 3840x1080 as hi-res or lo-res?

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The bad thing about staring at a screen from a close distance is that this effectively damages your eyes due to the short focus that your both eyes try to aim during a long period of time. Heavy eye strain and astigmatism are the most often results of close-range viewing. 80-90 cm should be the minimum, no matter the size of the screen.

What is the source of this information?

The most accurate source on the planet - peopleā€™s real-life experience.

I use Rhino3D v6 on my notebook computer, which is only has a 2880 x1680 screen, but itā€™s only 15.4", as well. Bigger is usually better, but it works.

There is a LG monitor for around $550, which is 42" and 4k. It has a little dimness in the corners, but thatā€™s still the display I am fancying: big, high-res, and not a kings ransom.

thanks for sharing!

with the ongoing discussion it becomes clearer to me that monitor specs (resolution, size) are only one half of the machine/human relationship.

would you mind revealing some of your particulars and habits such as monitor viewing distance, estimation of eyesight, and (hope this is not too personal) your age?
(shoe size not reqired)

i have another workplace, teaching at a university. there we use highres 24" displays viewed at a distance of ~ 40cm.
in terms of work ergonomics and comfort this situation is absolutely incomparable to my other one discribed above. i usually have an aching neck after a working day there (which fortunately is not very often) and also my eyes feel tired.

Staring at the screen from a very close distance results in a much quicker and stronger eye strain due to the angle both eyes use to focus on the former.

I look at a 27ā€ 4K monitor at about 20-24ā€ away (508-609mm). I only look closer to the screen when Iā€™m sketching by hand on screen (leaning over SurfaceBook 15ā€ or large Surface Studio 28ā€, and that gives me more eye strain and requires breaks)

Iā€™m 44 and donā€™t use glasses but I do have a prescription pair of glasses for computer work. I only use them sometimes when I have long computer days. I should use them more. When I do use them Iā€™m less tired, and thatā€™s what the optometrist told me: I spend less effort in the focusing part, and more in the actual work part. Itā€™s just not a habit for me to reach for the glasses yet, but I should.

Windows 10 is set to 150% scaling at the OS level, Adobe CC apps are mostly custom scaled too. If I recal correctly your Windows/Adobe versions only allow for two settings: too small and too large. Now they have a slider that allows you to get the right size of UI, that was enabled after an update in both sometime about 1-2 years ago?

Also I work on a mix of standing/sitting position. I try to be standing at least half of the time if not more (if I have a 6-8 day, if I work a very long day I end up sitting a bit longer) That also helps with posture, monitor viewing distance and reducing fatigue.

G

yes, i think you remember correctly. i have not tested yet, as i have no new monitor, but i already fear, i will encounter some hassle here. recently i read this article about custom manifests, which gives some hope, but i have not tried yet. any experiences with it?
anyhow i will stick to CS 5, as its still good for my needs and i dont want to support adobeĀ“s aggressive licencing policy. the only thing i sometimes miss is a 64bit illustrator. if someone knows a place where to buy a used license of AI CS 6, please tell me.

this sounds very much like what i was hoping for in rhino 6 ā€¦

interesting! this is almost exactly my approach. i never met anyone sharing this habit. what do you use to lift your workbench?

I never tried it, for me the Adobe subscription method works fine, especially because we use several tools from the suite. And Illustrator lately can handle large files much better than before, but if you donā€™t need some of this bells and whistles no point to upgrade, they havenā€™t really improve much, especially photoshop.

I have my computer on a desk, not my workbench, I used to have a Steelcase sit/stand desk at my last corporate job. It was nice looking but not very sturdy, manual paddle to lift (gas-assisted), and not a very large desk area. The realities of being stuck to corporate vendors of questionable value guess.

When I went on my own I bought an Evodesk, itā€™s much larger, fully automatic and with 4 memory positions of heigh. I like it a lot. Looks like this:


I ended up returning the keyboard tray, not very good, and not my thing.

We bought more for the entire office, I still like them a lot but I did notice on the second batch of desk that we got that the quality has gone down a bit. But they are still pretty good. Today I was at Ikea and I was looking at their standing desks too: they seem great for the price (but no memory setting).

I found that if I have to lift manually or have to dial in the height (even when motorized) I end up changing positions less (Iā€™m lazy for stuff like this) to the memory presets really works for me.

G

I strongly recommend you to use a program for reducing eye strain, such like ā€œf.luxā€ and ā€œIrisā€. Both of them are able to reduce the blue light from the LED backlight which is very dangerous for the human eye (exactly what the expensive yellow/green glasses for PC monitors are designed to filter). ā€œIrisā€ is a bit better and has extensive options for custom colours etc, and costs only $15. ā€œf.luxā€ is similar and completely free, but offers less ways to customize the colours. However, ā€œf.luxā€ vastly reduces or completely eliminates the flickering that most monitors, laptops, phones, tablets and TV sets produce! In most cases it will reduce the flickering even on screens where itā€™s very aggressive, though sometimes thatā€™s not possible. ā€œIrisā€ also could do it, but at a lesser extent. On my old laptop ā€œIrisā€ was unable to eliminate the flickering of the screen, while ā€œf.luxā€ succeeded.

I use ā€œf.luxā€ with the following settings:

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good to know, i sometimes got asked for readymade solutions.

personally i prefer a customized setup. for the desk stand i use a 1950ies hydraulic dentist chair base. (about 110 kg, but very sturdy)

it is rotatable (~ 200Ā°), to compensate for unpleasent light situations and reflections.
i make permanent use of ergorest elbow support to avoid sholder strain. my mouse"pad" is tilted outwards, which - in combination with an old logitech mouse - results in a wrist angle of 70-80Ā°:

at the moment i am working at a solution to make keyboard level independent from sreen level, maybe a little bit like the evodesk keyboard tray, but more stable and adjustable ā€¦

do you rember the name of this product?

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@brt1 - that is an amazing looking setup! do you generally stand while you work?

I have a electrically operated sit/stand desk, and a great chair that goes extra high - Hag Capisco - which I love, loads of different seating positions. if only I was disciplined enough to use them all!

the main issue I find is not having enough adjustment on the height of my monitor for standing as opposed to sitting, Iā€™d like to have some sort of articulated arm for thisā€¦

normally i start working in the standing position and switch to sitting in the late afternoon. the most important thing to my mind is, it really should be easy to completely switch from one position to another, without having to change a lot of things. otherwise one simply wonĀ“t do it.

from your description i cannot really figure out your setup and see what is missing to adjust your monitor.

when constructing my workbench i did a lot of research to find a (hydraulic) prefab stand to be modded. after discovering used dentist chairs (they exactly have the required lifting height between sitting and standing position), i spend a lot of time at ebay and other platforms till i found my ā€œritterā€ chair just around the corner. i use it since 8 years now and its really built for eternity : ))

Iā€™m going to have to save that search on ebay myself! My friend had a vintage drafting table with a similar hydraulic mechanism, beautiful thing.

with the monitor height, I like to have it quite high so that Iā€™m not looking down on the screen, but this means I have to have a shelf 180mm high to get it high enough when Iā€™m standing. It would be nice not have this on my deskā€¦

the drafting tables i checked had the disadvantage, that - even in their lowest position - were still to high to sit at them on a chair (at least the ones i saw in austria and germany). these also did not have a hydraulic mechanism, but had to be levered by pumpimg a pedal and a tilting mechanism unwanted for most computer use cases, which somehow has to be disabled. so maybe yours is different.
anyhow - before buying such a table, you should at least check its lifting height.

AND:
i would like to bring the discussion back to its initial focus, a zoomable or at least more customizable interface (textsize in menue, dialogs, ā€¦) for rhino 6. i am still hoping for some more feedback from mcneel officials.
also the thread i was refering to in my original message, gives some hope that a system registry key addition or a service release could improve the sitation as customizability and tight intergration of user wishes have - to my mind - always been two of rhinoĀ“s most attractive aspects.

You shouldnā€™t need to make any registry key hack with V6 as that version was written to detect and handle high resolution situations. The thread that you are referring to is for Rhino 5.

Text size in menus and dialogs is a Windows setting that will apply across most applications and not just Rhino.

i realised this. was just meant as an example for rhinoĀ“s user friendlyness

adobe obviously has some ā€œscalable interfaceā€ (read above)
what about autodetect and win 7?