Digital Art Zone

Hi
I’m using dual monitors with Carrara. Works fine. The issue I have my computer works fine with dual monitors, and i can drag
across between the two screens. But with Carrara when I have both screens “Gray” in preferences , Carrara eats the full second monitor with a gray desk top. This is ok but I can’t have a second window open on that screen. I would like my main screen to be 3d view, and sequencer, and the second monitor to have properties box AND adobe displaying the instruction manual. Right now the Carrara gray desktop covers the second application.  Doesn’t seem to matter whether I have ” Split Big screens in two selected or not.

This is a new i7 with a gig video card so I doubt it is a limitation of my system. Funny if I don’t select both windows grayed out in prefs, I see the second monitor but Carrara won’t drag to it.
Thanks
8068

I don’t think there is an easy way. There is an option in the Windows menu to use “Full Screen” - if you turn that off, Carrara becomes a regular window you can move and resize. But you would then have to position it so it takes 1.5 monitors, and move your properties panel around. I’m not sure if it will remember those positions when you’re done. I don’t know of any way to have the properties panel outside of the Carrara window.

It is a limitation with how Carrara is written. I used to use two monitors - usually a wonderful experience for nearly any application. But with Carrara, you get annoyances like this all the time. I suspect (pure conjecture on my part) that oddities like this are from trying to maintain both Windows and Mac source code trees. At the risk of starting a war, if Daz focused purely on Windows coding they could take advantage of certain API calls and coding techniques to make Carrara friendlier to multi-mon systems.

Garstor - 06 December 2012 07:10 AM

It is a limitation with how Carrara is written. I used to use two monitors - usually a wonderful experience for nearly any application. But with Carrara, you get annoyances like this all the time. I suspect (pure conjecture on my part) that oddities like this are from trying to maintain both Windows and Mac source code trees. At the risk of starting a war, if Daz focused purely on Windows coding they could take advantage of certain API calls and coding techniques to make Carrara friendlier to multi-mon systems.

I’m pretty sure that there is a fairly large number of mac users here.

dbuchter - 06 December 2012 08:23 AM

I’m pretty sure that there is a fairly large number of mac users here.

Hence my statement about not wanting to start a war. I have no interest in arguing the finer points of either OS; I was merely pointing out that maintaining two very different sets of source code and writing for portability between them probably limits a lot of what DAZ can do.

Speaking only personally; as much as I like Carrara, I think the UI sucks out loud. You get used to it but it could be improved in many ways. Multiple monitor support is just one of those ways.

Garstor - 06 December 2012 09:11 AM

dbuchter - 06 December 2012 08:23 AM

I’m pretty sure that there is a fairly large number of mac users here.

Hence my statement about not wanting to start a war. I have no interest in arguing the finer points of either OS; I was merely pointing out that maintaining two very different sets of source code and writing for portability between them probably limits a lot of what DAZ can do.

Speaking only personally; as much as I like Carrara, I think the UI sucks out loud. You get used to it but it could be improved in many ways. Multiple monitor support is just one of those ways.

That’s good about not wanting to start an OS war, because there are some Mac Users here that could make the same statement that you did, though going the other way.

Just so you know, Carrara’s dual monitor scheme sucks just as hard on the Mac side. I don’t have Adobe products behave like Carrara with dual monitors, and they’re cross platform, so I’m sure Carrara’s implementation has everything to do with Mac support, and nothing at all to do with poor coding.   It’s been like this since C5 at least and that’s around the time DAZ bought it from Eovia I believe, so the code’s been there quite awhile. I wonder if it has to do more with not updating code and less to do with cross platform support.

Thinking about it, it may not have a thing to do with code, but rather some misguided idea of what a good dual monitor UI should be. The rest of Carrara’s UI is unique compared to other apps, so it would make sense that the original devs would come up with a Carrara-centric UI for dual monitors as well.

Excellent points evil. My initial comment certainly is di-directional. I used a Mac once in high-school; that was at least 24 years ago…

Code or not, this is one of the reasons I’d like to see DAZ devs hanging out here from time to time. I’d love to hear their input on issues like this. “We can’t change features A, B and C because then D, E and F would break.”

That’s what I loved about working support with Microsoft. Occasionally, we would engage the developers and they would offer insights into an issue that we hadn’t thought of before. It was always fascinating.

I use C8 on a win7x64 PC with dual monitors (main is landscape and 2nd identical Dell 2412m is vertical) no problems.

I’m on my laptop right now, I’ll send myself a reminder and then post settings and screenshot. I have C8 main screen on main monitor and dragged all the other palettes to the second monitor; which is a typical setup I use for all my programs such as Photoshop, Painter, etc.

Wacom tablet works with both screens too.

Doug.S

Doug
I can get C8 on my main monitor and another application on the second. I can get Carrara to use two monitors.
When Carrara is using two monitors The second monitor has a desktop ( Gray ) that covers any application on that monitor when active.
You can get carrara active on two monitors and still see a second application?
Thanks
8068

8068 - 07 December 2012 08:12 AM

Doug
I can get C8 on my main monitor and another application on the second. I can get Carrara to use two monitors.
When Carrara is using two monitors The second monitor has a desktop ( Gray ) that covers any application on that monitor when active.
You can get carrara active on two monitors and still see a second application?
Thanks
8068

Yes, see attached .jpg of both screens (left=main=landscape, right=#2=portrait) screenshot (nothing changed, just did a snipping tool of “full screen”) with C8 running on both and IE on top of right screen; IE works on either or both/overlap).
Carrara does cover the desktop with gray but other apps can open on top as shown.

Also included a prefs page for monitors

Doug.S

you’re right,
I don’t know if in the confusion I had hit the “split screen box” but if I drag over with carrara open it seems ok.
Thanks
8068

What was my answer to this issue? Got a 30” Dell! @ $1,200 ISP LCD!  Its almost TOO big! My neck is starting to give me grief! Simply the best purchase I have made in decades.. BUT! I do have an old APPLE 23 inch SIlver LCD behind me. wishing to join in! HUM?

AS I recall using 2 of my old NEC 19 inch CRTS with carrara, my issues was that when you set it up the ay you wanted SAY the ass room on one and the other stuff on the other it would not SAVE and when you reopened you had to reset it again.

Before I bought 2 24” , I did some calcs
for your $1200 one monitor, you could buy 3 or 4   24”  and have way more screen real estate and be able to arrange in many ways

But a big screen, with high resolution does allow working on a larger image

Maybe a best solution is one 30” and a side/second monitor of 24” in portrait….I find 16x10 aspect ratio leaves too little height for tall docs unless in portrait mode….I read 8.5 x 11 almost always in portrait mode.