Layer Shift-Click-Drag on Multi-Headed Systems
Last night, after 17+ years of using the spawns of Concepts Unlimited (VC/VCP from 2008 to ~ 2012, and SLT to SCP from ~ 2011 onward), I just noticed something for my first time:
One of the reasons I couldn't SEE that my Shift-Drag of a layer name was that SharkCAD code was not firing because I didn't — in THIS CASE — drag the layer up from my lower-right physical display (where I keep my tool bars and pallets), across the bezel (counterintuitive, since the Layer Manger already is so limited in that layers can only be dragged within their own nested level, not outside, and definitely not to other files as a new or shared branch), and upwards onto the main display (where I draw).
Peculiarly, it was repeatable. The dragged text looked akin to what one sees on a mobile device: the selected, in-dragged-state text has a boundaey box, is on white, looks and feels like dragged text waiting to be dropped.
Of course, the layer name text didn't drop as text, and, certainly the associated geometry didn't land on screen.
This got my attention because for 15+ years of hoping against hope that I'll inadvertently surface a hidden feature that won't be exposed until sufficient monetization reality emerges, I half expected the LM to do something surprising.
Typically, maybe 80%+ of the time, whether on one display (laptop or desktop) or on my multi-headed display, a failed operation results in the error message something like "Layers cannot be moved outside of their nested level/layer".
The message variously/alternately will appear the pallet-holding display (22"), then a subsequent fail shows it on the main screen (29" display).
When I get aggressive, and start cursing, while furiously shift-dragging, a purple-ish or off-blue/white (I can't recall now; I'm not in front of my computer) drag box that originates apparently from the lower right display becomes observable once my hand overshoots the lowe display top bezel. I usually ignored it for YEARS. I guess I was so frustrated/discombobulated I simply never mentally processed, catalogued, and reported it.
Until now.
The graphics card in the laptop is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU.
The upper screen is an LG, set at 2650 x 1080, and it's perfectly sized and I can physically place horizontally a 1/350 ship model on it (taped) for just sitting there to ponder things before removing it).
Unrelated to the error is something bizarre:
In the NVIDIA tool, I clicked on "Display, Identify Displays", and the upper display is "1", as expected.
But, the lower left and lower right, identical HP M22f displays are numbered "1" and "2", respectively.
I've never seen THAT before. In the Windows tool, its 1, 2, 3.
When I backed out of the NVIDIA tool and went to Windows 11 (64-bit)'s tool, the display swttings for some reason showed:
4
2 3 1
The LG should be 1.
The lower left HP should be 2.
The lower right HP should be 3.
The one that is "1" would be the laptop 's lid, which is always closed (my physical desk space is wide enough to put the laptop physically centered on and in front of the 2 HPs, but not with the lid open, and the LG is position centered to my eyes when my posture is correct. I'm right-handed, so I keep the SharkCAD tools to the right, and reference docs (PDFs, Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Word Pro, JPGs, etc) on the left .
Additional, aside matter...
In 2003, I committed to paper my drawings at scale of 1" equals 20 ft.
On my LG, depending how windows feels about things, SharkCAD can display my model at a scale of 0.0422, and this lets me comfortably use my plastic W-38 C-Thru Ruler to pick off measurements without reaching for a calculator and scaling ratios. I think something in windows causes me to sometimes need to use a SLIGHTLY different value. When placing kit models against the display, 0.00287 works so my digital model size can be compared to the kit model.
The laptop (HP Victus ~16", year 2022, i7-1265H) can support up to 6 or 7, and I have HDMI adapters, but just not the ergonomics to exploit it all. The laptop has ~ 40960 MB system RAM (I upgraded it from the base 26 GB), pagefile is 19110 MB, and available is 27405 MB. My SharkCAD file usually uses under 5 GB of RAM, and currently, one I'm editing saves at 167 MB. A week or two ago, it was under 50 MB. Some of my others save at over 250 MB, depending on what's in view at save time.
The laptop's Intel graphics chip has 128 MB. The NVIDIA has 3,990 MB. Approx total shows 24304 MB. Shared is 20314 mb. The shared is the same for all 3 displays.
The current 02tmp.sab file size is 266,998 kb.
When I remember, I try to save, close the file, then close SharkCAD, then reopen, whenever I'm at saved file sizes over 100 MB. Sometimes, I manually rename the .sab file, but it reconstitutes itself at the same size then gradually changes as work progresses.
Anyway, I'm not sure what is really going on, but, it's interesting, especially since I've never surfed with this install of Windows from day one, or ~ Dec 2022.
Thanks for reading this if you got this far.
