I am considering to buy one or two monitors. I guess there are a few options:
1. One super large 4K monitor. For example, the Philips 43" 4K monitor or Philip 40" curved monitor
2. One LG 38" 4K curved ultrawide monitor
3. Two 27"- 30 something" 4K monitors such as the ones from Dell
4. open for suggestions
Given the GUI of SW, which type of monitor configuration is recommended?
I currently have 3x DELL P2317H monitors running at 1920 x 1080, Dell 23 Monitor | P2317H | Dell .
So it's only a 23" monitor.
It kind of comes down to what you do on a day to day basis. Are you trying to view a single spreadsheet with a lot of columns of information at once? A single ultrawide would be nice so there is no display bezel in the way. Or are you trying to look at a lot of spreadsheets with only a few columns of data in them which can easily fit on one monitor.
For SolidWorks, do you often use the dual monitor feature and have two part/assemblies open at once? I personally feel that a single monitor would be better for this and use the til window feature, again no bezel to get in the way. (Same goes for using the 4 port view)
Oh, and one of our engineers here has a larger single monitor for his home PC, I think it is in the 43" area. He didn't get a curved display and has found that at that size the curve display would be MUCH better.
The problems with one MASSIVE monitor are:
1. Not as easy to segregate things. With multiple monitors you can maximize something on a monitor and it maximizes on just that monitor, very convenient.
2. Cost. You can generally pick up a trio of super high resolution 27" monitors for less than one massive high resolution monitor. Even factoring in the cost of a multi-monitor mount, you generally come out ahead.
3. Positioning. Multiple monitors equals versatile positioning, often making it easier to have ideal viewing angles for every inch of screen you have. With a single monitor, you lose that versatility/flexibility.
If you do presentations, then having one rather huge monitor would be a significant advantage. But for just working, I prefer multiple monitors in the 24"-27" size range.
Also have multiple monitors allows you to rotate one as needed for displaying pdfs in a more natural format. My monitors came with a super nice stand that allows for me to this pretty easily. Sadly they don't auto sense the change, and update my display orientation in windows...so I don't do it that often...
I prefer multiple monitors, but do check that you can drive them successfully, especially with a laptop. We've had problems with Dell docking stations and DisplayPort cables, particularly the crappy Mini DisplayPort connectors.
You are correct Peter Cohen, all the screens can be adjusted individually. They can tilt up and down and turn axially. The arms have two joints so it is easy to adjust. We have a few users that have one of the side monitors turned vertically to tile two programs top and bottom. I think the stands that we bought will accept up to 24" monitors.
The company did opt for the cheaper Acer monitors but with our engineering department having close to 100 monitors I can understand.
Just to throw my 2 cents in, I absolutely hate 1080. It doesn't provide enough depth vs. width. Think about how we ended up with the aspect ratio... It was forced on us by the television industry, not decided on by engineers. The last CRT monitor I owned had more vertical pixels than 1080. So, in my opinion, 1080 is a step back from the CRT days. So, in my opinion, at least try to get 1200 or 1440 vertical pixels, and if you can, an aspect ratio of 16:10. But to get that aspect ratio, you will probably spend too much money.
We got stuck with dual 22" 1080 monitors here at work. I would have preferred 1 larger 2k monitor, maybe 27". On the other hand, I have a 4k at home, and it seems like it is too much sometimes.
This is one of the major reasons why I feel a CAD monitor must be at least 24". A 22" monitor is simply too small. Even if it had higher resolution than 1920x1080, it would still be undesirable because at a higher resolution the icons & text will be so small they will require superhuman eyesight. Thus, 24" monitors are the smallest size monitor that I recommend. 27" monitors are, imho, the perfect size for a multi-monitor system (which is, imho, the ideal system).
I completely agree...Care to straighten our IT group out?
While this is an area that tends to have a lot of variability for the "right" answer. It surely has the most to do with your work flow. I have always preferred to have a larger screen located directly in front of me. Then, to my left, a smaller monitor, but rotated 90 deg. Currently my main monitor is a 24" HD one, and the rotatable one is an older (but very good) Dell.
I have a desktop system for my work computer, and so I keep my personal laptop to the right. the middle monitor can be switched to display either monitor.
I work from home, and exchange documents a lot with the main office. I have a truely paperless system at my end. On the rotated monitor, I often have word processing docs, or PDFs from the main office or a vendor's catalog. More recently I have been doing a lot of programming, which benefits from using the vertical one, though I wish my central one was rotatable. I could buy a better stand for the main monitor, to permit rotating. And it is vaible for the 24" one. But, if you were to get a larger one, there are limitations to how big a monitor can be, and still allow it to rotate.
In my younger and years, when I was a bit near-sighted, I was content with a small CRT, that was run at a high resolution. Now in my early 50's and needing reading glasses, I do prefer a larger monitor.
Another consideration, is the depth of your desk. I would personally consider 32" to be the largest monitor that is viable.on my desk. If it were larger, the field of vision would be too big. The only alternative, would be to move the monitor off of my desk, and onto the wall.
-Joe
The depth of my desk is 90 cm and I plan to put the monitor(s) at the far back to have more desk space in front of me. I am a bit concerned that the font may be too small to see if each display is about 30". In SW, I work with many parts so a long tree. Having more vertical pixels may be good. As I recall, my home's laptop of about 20 years old have a vertical pixel count of about 1080. The last external monitor I had got a vertical pixel count of 1200. It was 24" but my desk was around 70 cm in depth. Having two or three displays are good for reasons mentioned but we can see the bezel in between the monitors. I guess one advantage to have a large display such as the philips 43" BDM4350UC or LG38UC99 is that they could be served as a decoration with changeable scenes and animations like a big window is on the wall.
I use both SolidWorks and Matlab/Simulink usually one at a time. In Simulinks, I also make mechanical models.
Anybody tried those curved display? Whenever I see them, I feel very sick. Js had a look at aLG 32" curved display. Within a minute of browsing the internet , I felt motion sickness. I heard that the 38" version is more curved. Is this just me or it takes time to get used to? I read many excellent review about that monitor.
Ultrawide vs Dual Screen - what is the best setup for productivity? - YouTube
Best Way to Setup My Dual Monitors? - YouTube
Having two screens side by side, rotated by 90 degrees, seems good for big assemblies that have a long tree. The bezel in the middle is the problem.
I prefer a 3-up configuration with portrait-oriented side monitors. I end up reading a lot of portrait oriented docs, so this makes sense. Also, Outlook fits nicely into the top half and Chrome in the bottom. A landscape display wouldn't work as well since monitors' Vdim > Hdim/2. Also, it's easier to fit portrait oriented monitors onto a smaller desk area.
Here's a pic of my previous config. These are all 24" Dell TN displays. The new config will be a 27" 4K center with 24" 1080p sides and all IPS. The side monitors especially should be IPS since TN displays have severely limited vertical (now horizonatal) view angle.
Thanks for the warnings. I thought of getting 32" 4K but now I should cross that out. For all these SW issues with 4K, do they happen also when the screen is very large, say the Philips 43" BDM435OUC running Windows 10? At that size, fonts should be readable and therefore no need to scale up.
How does SW looks like when 2-3 monitors (in portrait-oriented mode) are standing next to each other? Is it Windows OS or the software itself that allows the UI to spread across the screens as if they were one?
add another display and make it in a diagonal position jajaja nice setup
Just skimmed through this thread quickly but didn't see much discussion about the technology behind the monitor which is a pretty important consideration.
Cheaper (and many gaming) monitors historically have been TN panels. This means they may have poorer viewing angles and color reproduction
A more professional grade monitor will likely have an IPS panel or other similar technology.
Edit: The quality of the backlight is also really important. I'm still seeing monitors produced today that have uneven distribution of brightness on the screen. A decent monitor should have a very consistent brightness and that would show up on a good hardware review. Or if you test a monitor in person, make sure to check a full white and full black screen.
Staring at your monitor for many hours a day, it's really important to find the right balance that minimizes eye strain. And for lots of text + graphics work (like SOLIDWORKS) I strongly prefer IPS panels, although it can be a personal preference. The downside of IPS is it usually isn't as fast on refresh rate or response time if you expect to be watching a lot of fast paced multimedia, etc but that usually isn't a problem in a professional environment.
It would also be worth seeing if you can find a review benchmarking the other aspects such as backlight uniformity, color correctness (if that matters to you) etc
The big monitor vs many small monitors is another age-old argument and you'll hear different responses from everyone. I always ask "What do you need the extra screen real estate for?" Personally I prefer many smaller monitors because I don't need that much real estate for one application and it reduces the amount of time I need to spend tiling windows.
Are there any array backlit monitors? I thought this was only used on large high end TVs?
Personally I prefer VA panels because of better contrast ratio. Viewing angle is not as good as IPS but more than enough when you are sitting directly in front of monitor.
For me, the advantage of more screen real estate for Solidworks means clearer view of model, less time spent zooming, easier selection, better view of tree etc.
My experience is when you give users larger monitors, no matter how adamant they are that they don't need a larger monitor, they never want the smaller one back;-)
I think you're correct that array backlit monitors aren't commonly available
I should edit my post to say that "poorly implemented back lighting" is what you want to watch out for. Any half decent monitor will have a nice even distribution, but I still see modern monitors that you can very obviously tell are edge light because of brightness gradients in one place or another.
Another issue to be aware of is PWM backlight flicker. This is another thing some people are sensitive to that should be mostly phased out on newer monitors, but worth verifying.
I read that PWM causes headache for some users. Better stay away from monitors that use PWM I guess.
Without scaling, any good TV in the range of 43"to 50" that can produce clear text and nice graphics in SW?
I don't think the physical size of the display has any relation to SW's ability to deal with it. The large number of pixels in a 4k monitor is the thing triggering the bugs.
-Joe
In the past I have had a few program that would not permit me to drag its window across the two displays that I have. But, that was before Windows 7. There is no question that the operating system has the bulk of the responsibility to manage multiple displays.
My current Windows 7 Pro system has occasionally created problems because of my two displays, since one of them is oriented vertically. This seems to trigger problems like a sub-window of a program being opened up off screen. This has happened on multiple programs. It seems that Windows may report the screen area as a single bounding box that encloses the two areas.
I, too, lamented the reduction in vertical resolution when HD became common. This was made worse with the introduction of the ribbon and tabs. It seems that every new windows feature wants to eat up more vertical resolution.
-Joe
What is the size and resolutions? Is it true that having two or three 2560x1400 or 2560x1400 is better than one large 43" 4K? At least horizontal wise, the number of pixels is much larger.