Determining a Window Size

When adjusting your picture size, you work with the window property, and you define the size as a percentage of screen:

• Full Screen
• 1/2 Screen Height
• 1/2 Screen Width
• 1/4 Screen

By sizing a window by the percentage of the screen, iFIX scales your picture, maintaining its coordinate system and displaying the picture at its original aspects regardless of the monitor resolution it is viewed on.

The default window and document properties are displayed in the Picture Preferences tab of the User Preferences dialog box. These properties are applied when you create a new picture. The new picture's viewport is automatically set to display the maximum viewable amount of your picture at a 100% zoom ratio. For more information on zooming, refer to the Controlling a Picture's Magnification section.

To change the size of your window for all new pictures to be created, select a window size in the Window Size field.

Logical Coordinate System

For the Logical Coordinate System, when you want to modify the default document width or height (100 x 75), make sure that the ratio between the width and height remains at 4:3. You can select any units you want; however, if you choose not to maintain the 4:3 ratio, objects with an identical width and height do not appear as such in the window. For more information on the logical-units-to-pixels ratio, refer to the section, The Document.

Enhanced Coordinate System

For the Enhanced Coordinate System, the document width and height is calculated in postscript points. When determining a window size, it is important to use the resolution on the computer where the pictures are intended to be viewed.  For example, you might create a picture for viewing on a high-definition computer with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, which assumes a wide screen aspect ratio of 16:9.  

Once you create a picture, you can change its size by changing the percentage of the Window Height and Window Width properties in the Edit Picture dialog box. In the Edit Picture dialog box, you can specify the desired percentage to represent the size your picture. iFIX automatically preserves the size of the objects on the screen.

You can have a window that is full screen, half the height of your screen, half the width of the screen, or one quarter of the screen's size. These sizes are illustrated in the following figures.

Full Screen Window Size

Half Screen Height Window Size

Half Screen Width Window Size

Quarter Screen Window Size

Manually Changing the Picture Size of a Logical Coordinate System Picture

By manually adjusting the size of the window, you can quickly change the view of your picture, when you use the Logical coordinate System.

Before you attempt to adjust the size, make sure you know what document components you are changing in the picture. The following table shows what key sequences or mouse actions that change your picture size, and what part of the document you actually modify.

NOTE: The key sequences apply only to pictures that use the Logical Coordinate System.  They do not apply to pictures that use the Enhanced Coordinate System.

See Also

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