Laptop Display?

[japcas]

Hey guys. I have a Compaq Presario laptop that is about 2 to 3 years old running XP. I bought it mainly so I can check my email and surf the web when I travel out of town. I use my desktop at home 99.9% of the time. Anyway, I have tried two different cad programs on it and they work fine with one exception. When I draw a circle it looks elliptical. I've fiddled with the display settings but that doesn't help. Websites and photos look perfect but not circles drawn in the cad program. I could live with it but it looks screwy when you are cadding out a part. I'd just like to do some cad work while I'm away so I at least feel like I am getting in some shop time. Have any of you seen this or know of any solutions to fix it?

[biometrics]

There should be a menu driven system built into your monitor that allows you to adjust the display width and height. Look for a menu buttion, or read the book that came with the monitor. No Book? Look up the model on the internet...

Display a 4 inch circle on the screen drawn in CAD and make adjustments until it is the same size measured with a machinist rule horizontally and vertically. Then push the save or exit button on the monitor to hold those adjustments.

[Peter.]

Sounds like you have to check that you are running the NATIVE resolution of your screen. as Biometrics says, first port of call is to check the machines BIOS setup for any screwy display settings. For many Compaq's, this will be by pressing F10 at boot-up, or possibly F2.

[studentjim]

Jonathan, have you drawn a circle with the cad program and then printed it? I had a program that did that very same thing, looked like an oval on the screen but printed fine

[loose nut]

Some cad programs have a setting in the controls that allow you to adjust the aspect ratio of what's displayed. Look in the tools menu.

[japcas]

There isn't a menu driven system that I can find on my laptop. I've seen them on external monitors though. I haven't printed anything off of the laptop but I'm sure it should print fine because I can dimension the circle drawn at different angles and it always outputs the right dimension. This tells me it's just a viewing problem. I may have too look into the options for the program itself and see if I can true it up like Loose Nut said.

I'm still open to more opinions and I'll let you know what I figure out. Thanks.

[John Stevenson]

Mine also shows it as an ellipse but as they usually turn out elliptical off the lathe I don't worry

.

[japcas]

I got it fixed. Loose Nut was right. There is an option under "Option" of all places called "Screen Size". I took a rough measurement of the screen and entered that in and now my circle looks perfect. I hadn't messed with that option on the desktop because it displays properly. Thanks a lot for all of the help guys.