Display Settings

When personal computers first became useful in businesses, the monitors were pretty difficult.  They were monochrome, with big dots forming text letters.  Later color displays were not much better.  With the advent of the Windows Operating System, and the Graphical User Interface, monitors became easier to read as the resolution improved.

For many years, the industry had large desktop displays that used the VGA standard, which had a resolution 1024 x 768.  Auto Shop Writer for Windows was designed to fit these monitors exactly, and this became our "Standard" mode.

In more recent years, with rapidly falling prices, Widescreen monitors have become popular on both desktops and notebook computers.  Large 24" widescreen displays are available for less than $150 with bright colors and easy to read displays.  The current set of monitors are designed to run 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution.

Tablets are also becoming popular.  Some, like the Microsoft Surface Pro, also run at the same resolution except on a smaller screen.  You cannot run ASW on an iOS or Android device.  These are not suited for full productivity applications.

Select the type of display from the Tools - Setup - Display setting option. This can be individual to each workstation.

Your Monitor settings

For the display to size correctly, your monitor must be set correctly.  If you click the right mouse button on a blank area of the display, and select Screen Resolution, you will see an image like this.  If the Resolution is less than 1920 x 1080 as shown here, you will need to click on that box to re-set it.  If this setting is NOT available, then you likely have old drivers, or generic drivers, installed for either the monitor or video card.  Your hardware specialist can help you obtain the right drivers.

The other issue that will make the screens not display properly is the font size.  Below the resolution displayed above will be a link to allow you to change the font size.  Make sure you click on that and set it to smaller.  That is actually 100% of the actual size established in the software.  If you use a larger font, the display will not fit onto the screen properly.

Operation

When using the Wide screen mode, the program fills the entire screen.  Many businesses now use dual monitors.  ASW would run on one, and other programs would run on the other.  Even though you are running ASW across the full screen, the task bar on the bottom still shows you all currently running programs.  Open the ones you will use, then simply switch between them by clicking on their task bar icons.  It becomes quite easy to run many programs in full screen mode doing this.