getting ovals when I draw circles

When I draw a circle it appears as an oval, no matter what camera I use. The horizontal axis is at a greater scale than the vertical

axis. Thusly the tape measure shows the same radius along either axis even though the horizontal axis appears much greater than the vertical.

I am using free SketchUp 7.0.10248 on my Mac 2 x 3 GHZ dual core xeon, 9 ,GB- 667 Mhz.

My video/graphics card is ATY Radeon X1900. My research gives this as open GL version 2.0 and GLSL version 1.2

When I use SketchUp 6.0277 on my Mac G4, 500 Mhz dual processor I have no problems with distortion.

Any suggestions?

I have been considering buying the pro version but am very reluctant to do, so until I solve this... whats more to come???

Thanks

Dave

Try the top view.

When one see's a circle ate a certain angle, it appears as an oval. It's one of them optical illusions.

Dave,

Try one of the other screen resolutions till you get it right. (When doing so, have topview selected to check, like mpowell suggested.)

Wo3Dan

First of all, let's assume that purewood is describing a valid display issue.

I'm pretty sure that rubyscript (plugins) can, indeed, change the aspect ratio of the "camera" view (of what's displayed onscreen.)

What if an installed "autorun" plugin is changing his aspect ratio? Would this "stretch" or "squash" what's displayed onscreen?

I'm no Ruby expert, so I'm honestly asking the above questions. Would a group member who is proficient in Ruby be willing to comment, or test whether a plugin could be the culprit here?

___________________

Purewood, does everything displayed onscreen appear to be squashed or stretched?

Taff

Taff,

You've got a good point there Taff, about ruby.

And I also think I remember a discussion about aspect ratio where Gully gave someone advice about correcting the screen display. But then again, this was not about ruby.

Troubleshooting can be hard. ;)

Wo3Dan

mpowell.. thanks but yes, I can orbit my oval around and end up with an apparant circular circle but it's at some odd angle of view..

neither front or back or top or bottom.

Wo3Dan... caramba!!! Isn't that cool. Thank you... yep, now my circle is circular and my square is square. Hat's off to you !

dave

Taff...Wo3Dan nailed it. And yes.... later I tried a suare and it also was stretched out on the horiz axis. I had never tried screwing with the specific resolutions before... interesting to see the different orientations and stretching that happens as I change resolutions.

You guys' help sure is neat!

Thanks,

dave

THANKS AGAIN!!

dave

Go to the Camera menu and select parallel projection, under Standard Views select Top. With the perspective now turned off, and if your circle in fact lays on the horizontal plane, it should display as a perfect circle on your screen. It may still display as an ellipse if at some point you've rotated the circle perpendicular to it's central axis.

-Greg

Greg... as you can see from previous entries my "problem" was that of not using the correct resolution on my moniter.`with the particular resolution I was using everything along the horizontal axis was stretched out ... another resolutiuon stretched out the vertical axis!... a simple solution and learning something new but basic! thanks,

dave

Gaagh! This was a perspective view issue!

> the particular

> resolution I was using everything along the horizontal axis was

> stretched out ... another resolutiuon stretched out the vertical

> axis!

Monitors can often take a wide range of resolutions, and many of the ones you can choose from will be the wrong ratio. The best thing to do is read what the native resolution is for that monitor, and set your machine to match that. With just trial and error you'll find many that look right, but some of those will not be using the most out of your monitor, and some will be too high resolution, leaving you with a softer looking image. It'll be at its best when it's exactly the right resolution.

Colin... thanks for the additional info...I will have to find out what that native resolution is.

dave