I waited most of my life to purchase my own computer. I finally pulled the trigger after I paid off my car. My colleague, Luwayne (our hardware specialist) and I shopped around for the best deals, and I managed to put my own system together. My first personally built computer.  

I thought I had considered everything, including screens. I had an old Dell 27” of medium resolution and I also then purchased two more Dell 27” screens of higher resolution. These came in at a relatively inexpensive price, and while I did not have 4 screens as I would optimally have liked, they did make my life a lot easier, and I believed the multi-screen setup would be fine.

Then I became involved in a Plant 3D project, and I got to learn from the experts. They were operating 100 Hz 34 Inch Ultra-Wide IPC Screens, and when they shared their screens with me over Microsoft Teams, it was almost impossible to make out their screen share (the information was too much for my screen). I considered various options then, and because I did not want to let the team down, I went full on and purchased a new Dell 100 Hz 34 Inch Ultra-Wide IPC Screen backed by a 3-year guarantee.  It has a curvature value of 1500R.

My graphics card was able to generate the 99.98 Hz refresh rate. Early problems I experienced was due to me having an HDMI connection instead of a Display Cable. This limited the frequency of the screen and made the mouse stutter. As soon as I switched out the cables, the screen behaved perfectly.

The In-Plane Switching (IPS) screens give true colour accuracy, wide viewing angles, no burn-in risk and a reliable lifespan.

The resolution is set to 3440 x 1440. I was told that the crispness of the text and lines in CAD would be better than on the other screens. By comparison, the newer 27” Dell LED screen was set to 1920 x 1080 and 120 Hz. It almost felt like I was wearing spectacles when looking at the 34” IPS as opposed to normal degraded vision on the 27” LED.

The aspect ratio of the 34” is 21:9 and the 27” is 16:9. Besides that, the heights of the 27” and 34” are very similar and flow easily from side to side.

For this reason, the display of Autodesk Software is much wider. In this video we see how that can play to your advantage considering various software. This can be as a single program taking up the whole screen or two applications side-by-side. I will not be concentrating on the details of the programs in this video, so you should only look at the pattern of the software layout and decide for yourself if that will be of use to you.  

If you are considering purchasing a professional CAD screen, contact us at Micrographics so we many advise you accordingly.

If you need help adopting the AEC Collection or Autodesk Forma in your practice or you are looking to invest in hardware, please contact Micrographics so that we may be of assistance.