QUESTION:
I Installed 5.20 on a laptop running XP (Home) and found that, when drawing in the model, the dimensions displayed leave a trail of shadows behind as you move the cursor. Is this a bug or just me?
ANSWER:
We're guessing it looks a bit like a slug has been following your cursor around in the ECOTECT window -- would we be right ?
If so, this has to do with the new effects options for fonts in the graphics settings for XP. To display interactive text, ECOTECT uses a draw/redraw method to toggle it on and off without redrawing the whole window. If you have font smoothing on, Windows renders the text slightly differently each time, leaving a slight residue.
To fix this you can either turn off font smoothing in Windows or turn off the interactive dimension text in ECOTECT.
- To turn off font smoothing, you need to go into the Display settings for your computer, go to the Appearance tab then in the bottom right corner click the button called Effects. You need to either uncheck the "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:" or choose the "Standard" item from the pull-down list. It might be best to uncheck this option, as choosing Standard will only work if you are also using standard fonts in your display settings.
- To turn off the interactive dimension text in ECOTECT, select the File » User Preferences... menu item and then choose the Modelling tab. The uncheck the Display interactive distances option and click the Store as Default Settings... button.