Won't show smooth lines???

[Tara]

I am working in a drawing that will not show me smooth lines. Splines show as cornered lines, dashed lines show as solid lines, circles as octogons etc.

When I plot them however the are exactly as they should be.

Why is this and can I turn off the setting that is making it behave this way?

[robfowler]

Click on the Tools menu, choose Options at the bottom of the dropdown list. Click on the Display tab when the Options window opens and change the setting for Arc and circle smoothness to 2000 (max is 20000).

Alternatively type in VIEWRES at the command line and change the setting there.

Also ensure SHADEMODE is set to 2D as circles don't always appear smooth when SHADEMODE is set to 3D.

The reason Acad defaults to a low viewres setting is to allow faster regen of the screen. A circle is still a circle even though it is seen as a series of small lines. However I haven't noticed any deterioration in screen regen when I use a setting of 2000 but then I'm not working with massive files where this may be a problem.

Rob.

[CADTutor]

Tara

This is to do with View Resolution. You can set the value for this in one of two ways:

From the pull-down, go to Tools>Options... When the Options dialogue appears, click the Display tab. In the right-hand column you will see a value for "Arc and circle smoothness". The default value for this in AutoCAD 2004 is 1000. It's likely that this value has been set much lower for the drawing you are using. The value can range from 1 up to 20,000 where 1 is lowest quality and 20,000 is highest quality.

The second method is to use the command line. If you enter VIEWRES at the command prompt, you will be asked "Do you want fast zooms?". Answer "Yes" and then you will be able to enter a value just as above.

You might wonder why bother having this setting at all. Well, the higher the view resolution, the harder AutoCAD has to work to display the drawing as you zoom and pan around and consequently the whole drawing experience can slow down, particulary on older machines or with very large drawings. It's not such an issue these days with very fast PC's but as with many aspects of AutoCAD, the old work-arounds for problems relating to large drawings and slow machines are still available.

[Tara]

Thanks so much for your help! I got it working right now.
After many hours of frustration mind you!

Thanks again guys!