Question about running dual monitors or quad monitors.?

Question

I am a cad draftsmen and looking at buying a number of monitors to run on one computer. What i am am actualy doing is building a cad work station in the center of the station will be a steel modleing station that is stand alone. Then i want to build a cad application station. With the ability to run 4 monitors. 2 to the right and 2 to the left of the main system screen.
So my question is this when running a dual or quad system monitor. Do you have the ability to run different applications on each monitor. And let say i am viewing 3 different PDF files can i open all three at once. And be running autocad on the other monitor. You get the idea. Thanks for you input.

Answer 1

absolutely. good idea. make sure you get a good video card to run the extra monitors or it will be poor quality. any of the newer cards should work

Answer 2

i think a dual monitor can do you good. having more than that... i think you'll get confused later on.



hardware wise there are lots of video cards in the market that you can use.



on the software side, you'll just have to launch the software on each monitors.



aside from that, no matter how many monitors you install, you still got one set of eyes. you cannot work (or look) at all monitors at the same time, you still have to navigate your mouse on each monitor and work or look at it.



i use dual monitors, when i'm working on a software one side of the monitor is the application and the otherside is the visual basic application. as i modify the visual basic, i'll have to look at the other monitor to see it's effect. it'll be easier than pressing alt-tab all the time.



another suggestion instead of investing on many monitors, is that, get a bigger monitor, a 22 or 24" wide screen will be good.



if you need to read pdf files on one monitor, why not just print it instead, a piece of paper is cheaper than purchasing another video card and monitor, and consuming electricity.

Answer 3

Running three different APPLICATIONS is three different monitors is easy. any application will maximise to the full size of the monitor not the desktop. So Reader + Word + Excel - no problem.



Viewing three different PDFs at the same time is harder. This is one application with three daughter windows.



If you maximise the application (Adobe Reader) then it fill one monitor only. If you run it in a window and drag it across multiple monitors the default action of the daughter windows (each PDF file) is to maximise to the application window.



The way you can do this is to drag the application window across multiple monitors. Then click the Restore icon on each daughter window and drag and resize each daughter window onto one of the monitors.



If you are doing this occasionally it is not to bad. It is a pain to be doing it over and over.

Answer 4

Yes you can do this, my advice though is when you get it all set up with the graphics cards and stuff, be sure that you get you lots of RAM, you will need it. I wouldn't really recommend opening AutoCAD on different screens though. Unless your files are small or you have ton of RAM. Keep in mind that if you have windows XP that it maxes out a 3Gigs of RAM

Answer 5

yes, you can do that. It can be tricky to set up more than 2 monitors, but when you do, you can link them, so that when you move your mouse in one direction it moves to the next monitor, and you can drag any window to a different monitor.

I work in tech support for my school and I have dual monitors set up at my desk.

Answer 6

Yes, you can do all this, once you have the correct video card setup.