Are My Eye Deceiving Me?

Altair Forum User

I make a circle. Now I start zooming in. It quick looks like the circle is a polygon.

 

If I'm trying to have an accurate tangent to a circle I don't seem to have it as when I zoom in the circle and tangent line are not touching?

 

mark

 

ArjunA_22390

Hi Mark,

 

Can you please attach a screenshot of this?

 

Thanks,

Arjun

Altair Forum User

Here is two concentric circles where I have zoomed in on them. The look polygonal to me...

 

I appear to be having trouble attaching images.

 

mark

Altair Forum User

Here is two concentric circles where I have zoomed in on them. The look polygonal to me...

 

mark

 

Unable to find an attachment - read this blog

Darren Chilton_21533

From your images it looks like there are two things that are making the visualization seem incorrect when in fact the geometry is probably fine.

 

The first item is the level of graphic detail, which is what you are seeing when you zoom in on the circle.  To increase the visual quality, from the View menu at the top choose Detail.  Once the Detail panel pops up choose either High or Maximum and you should see the visual quality of the circle improve.  For simple scenes the Maximum setting is fine, but with more complex scenes it can cause the application to slow down due to the added graphic detail that has to be calculated.

 

The second issue where it looks like the line segment may not be tangent to the circle looks slightly distorted due to how the arrow is being drawn on your screen.  You can turn off the arrows on the curves to get a better visual. To to so, open the Preferences Panel (Mac - it's in the Evolve menu.  Windows - it's located in the Help menu).  Click on the View tab in the Preferences Panel and deselect the Arrow on Curves option.

 

It's important not to confuse the mathematical accuracy of the geometry with the visual accuracy of the geometry.  For example, you can snap one curve to another where mathematically they are touching, yet if you zoom in far enough it may seem as though there is a gap.  There are many factors that can cause this in any program such as, screen resolution, screen size, graphics cards, etc...

 

Hope that helps.

 

Cheers,

Altair Forum User

Thanks Darren. I've working in other packages were things always look perfect. I understand that this is a hard problem and zoomed in enough things may not look connected. The polygon look was a bit of surprise.