Working with High Resolution Computer Screen

Alright, recently I bought a new tablet laptop, which is the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2. It is not necessarily the fastest computer for CAD software, but I was looking for portability. Everything in this computer works perfectly fine. The solid state memory will take only 3 seconds to start up the computer, and it is pretty light-weight and slim for a laptop.

The display is marvelous, displaying up to 3200 x 1800 resolution, any video would appear flawless. But despite that, it is causing few problems.

Few software seems to be incompatible with the resolution, displaying a very very small view. This problem was very well explained by Scott Hanselman here. According to the Lenovo forum, this root cause of this issue is that the software installed to the computer does not have resolution adaptive programmed to it. And this exception also happened to CAD software as well.

While the small icon is still visible (thanks to the high screen resolution), it is almost un-clickable. You will need like 3 seconds just to adjust the location of your mouse cursor in order to click the right things. After 30 minutes of modelling, trust me, you have achieved nothing. Well, maybe something, but not much.

Snapshot of SolidWorks in high resolution screen. Notice how small the icons are..

Another snapshot. Compare the sketch icon besides the Front Plane at model tree. Tell me how to click this icon?

Looking at the current trend, I don't foresee that any CAD software would update their programming as high resolution device is not that very common. Furthermore, typical CAD software user would rather to install their software on desktop rather than on portable laptop.

To handle with this issue, what I did was to set the screen resolution to 1600 X 900, and activate the "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays", and then choose the 100% options. You will need to restart your computer in order for this changes to take place.

This option works like wonder not only for CAD software, but for other software that does not support resolution compatibility, for example Photoshop, AutoCAD, and Adobe After Effect. The high resolution is a little bit sacrificed with this option, and watching videos are not as pleasant as previously. And here's the million dollar question. Why would we're paying for device that can display good resolution when we're using only half of its capability? Its like buying a Lamborghini and use it only to buy groceries..

Set the screen resolution to 1600 x 900

And thick the "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays"