Lines displayed with steps

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andrew
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Lines displayed with steps

Post by andrew » Tue Feb 03, 2015 1:29 pm

From a QCAD user:
Straight lines at a slight angle from the horizontal axis appear to be shown as a series of short horizontal lines making up the line. How can I prevent this from happening?

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andrew
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Re: Lines displayed with steps

Post by andrew » Tue Feb 03, 2015 1:42 pm

What you are experiencing is caused by the way how computer monitors are made and how they work.

Every display is essentially made up of tiny little dots, called pixels. Since these pixels are aligned orthogonally in a grid, only horizontal and vertical lines can be properly displayed without steps in them. Angled lines always appear to have steps in them, here shown magnified:
Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 13.40.23.png
Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 13.40.23.png (15.61 KiB) Viewed 2912 times
The effect might be more apparent in thicker lines. If this is the case, you can switch to draft mode to display all lines as thin as possible (1 pixel): View > Draft Mode

Please note that all of this only affects the display of your drawing and not the contents of your drawing.

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andrew
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Re: Lines displayed with steps

Post by andrew » Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:13 am

QCAD 3.9.0 comes with a display option to use anti-aliasing which might improve the experience for some users:
Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 10.06.44.png
Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 10.06.44.png (14.62 KiB) Viewed 2846 times

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