topic Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color? in Revit API Forum

How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

jmmiller.southlandind — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 17:23:42 GMT

I am currently struggling with changing the color of tab header on the Revit ribbon. I have attempted to source answers from The Building Coder's Pimp my AutoCAD or Revit Ribbon blog among others, but have been unable to get the results I am seeking. As you can see from the image below I can get the panel background to color using a TabThem. The TabTheme has allows me to set TabHeaderBackground and TabHeaderForeground, which I would have thought would be what I was looking for. I would have expected my below code to color the panel background and the tab header orange.

I would be grateful for any advice anyone could offer to point me in the right direction to getting the tab header to change color.

adWin.RibbonControl ribbon = adWin.ComponentManager.Ribbon; LinearGradientBrush gB = new LinearGradientBrush(); gB.StartPoint = new System.Windows.Point(0, 0); gB.EndPoint = new System.Windows.Point(0, 1); gB.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(Colors.Orange, 0.0)); gB.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(Colors.Orange, 1)); Autodesk.Internal.Windows.TabTheme myTheme = new Autodesk.Internal.Windows.TabTheme(); myTheme.PanelBackground = gB; myTheme.TabHeaderBackground = gB; myTheme.TabHeaderForeground = gB; ribbon.FindTab("BIM TOOLS").Theme = myTheme;

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

jeremytammik — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 18:54:02 GMT

The Revit API and the Revit user interface do not support this.

All I know is in the article you pointed out.

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

jmmiller.southlandind — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 20:23:40 GMT

@jeremytammik thank you for the quick reply. You indicated that Revit user interface does not support this feature. Is there any other method you are aware of to change the tab header color? I ask because my inspiration to try to figure out how it is done was derived from an add-in that has the tabs colored. Please see image.

Also, for my own education. If the TabHeaderBackground and TabHeaderForground are not controlling the Tab, do you have any idea what they do control?

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

RevitBuilder43 — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 06:47:09 GMT

Try a similar solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0PXfTu7xyw

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

RevitBuilder43 — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 06:47:26 GMT

Try a similar solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0PXfTu7xyw

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

Omar_Amen — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 11:04:58 GMT

Interesting question, any updates or work-around way ??

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

jeremy_tammik — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 18:22:54 GMT

I repeat the answer I gave above:

The Revit API does not support this, and the development team have good reasons for this decision.

I you wish to violate the standard Revit UI standards, you can refer to the article discussed above.

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

RevitBuilder43 — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 11:38:49 GMT

This functionality is now available in the Autodesk App Store.

Download: https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/ru/Detail/ColoringTabs

or here: https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/ru/Detail/Index?id=6172229355984601104&appLang=en&os=Win64

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

JamesPark_Acad10 — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 15:41:39 GMT

Unfortunately, Autodesk has removed that app.

Autodesk: we need to have the ability to change tab colors !!!

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

jeremy_tammik — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 17:13:28 GMT

You could submit a wish for this functionality to the Revit Idea Station. Whenever you require a new or enhanced Revit product or Revit API functionality, the Revit Idea Station is the place to go. Please search there for a corresponding wish list entry for the suggested functionality and add your comments to it, or create a new one, if none already exists:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/idb-p/302

If it is a pure API related wish, tag it as such:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/idb-p/302/tab/most-recent/label-name/api

Ensuring that a wish gets as many votes as possible helps underline its importance to you and the rest of the developer community. The Revit Idea Station is currently one of the main driving input forces for Revit API enhancements. The Revit development team looks there. Your comment here in the discussion forum might be overlooked. Thank you!

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

Speed_CAD — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 01:13:43 GMT

Hi,

Yes, that's possible!

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

rmaxiluna — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 19:10:01 GMT

PyRevit has a tool for colorize tabs,

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

tuah_edu — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 03:42:30 GMT

I believe the original question is to colorized the add-on tab itself, not opened Revit tabs. But this pyRevit feature is indeed a nice to have when you constantly have multiple .rvt .rfa files opened in a Revit session.

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

maisoui — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 13:09:04 GMT

@Speed_CAD Ok, nice, but how? Can you share your code snippet please?

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

Speed_CAD — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 05:20:35 GMT

Hi maisoui,

Sorry, I hadn't seen your message. I had left aside the code to change the color of the Ribbon tabs, a week ago I resumed this development to customize the Ribbon tabs and added a command search engine, all of this to test and it is taking good shape. I am also customizing the document tabs.

(view in My Videos)

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

Moustafa_K — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 04:14:52 GMT

Well the answer to this a bit long, are your ready!

Short version

All in all, it is doable, but i wouldn't recommend much playing with UI styles.

Based on my personal experiments, I found that customizing view tabs in Autodesk Revit can enhance the design flow and make the UI more intuitive. I personally do it for myself satisfactory. Although there is no official documentation, these techniques can help users manage Styling the UI.

Revit's UI is built with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), allowing for property changes such as background colors. The key to UI customization is the ApplicationTheme class in the UIFramework assembly, which controls most Revit themes.

I have documented what I was able to figure out, it was good experience to see all these UI controls how they behave and connected together.

To change the color of View tabs, modify properties like CanvasActiveTabNormalBackgroundColor and CanvasActiveTabHoverBackgroundColor:

var appTheme = UIFramework.ApplicationTheme.CurrentTheme; appTheme.CanvasActiveTabNormalBackgroundColor = Colors.DarkRed; appTheme.CanvasActiveTabHoverBackgroundColor = Colors.DeepPink;

For more details "Long version Answer", refer to my full article on this topic.

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

ankofl — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:35:45 GMT

Can we find out at least one of these "big reasons"? Reasons that run counter to the interests of a large number of users?

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

jeremy_tammik — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 13:29:25 GMT

That is something you would have to discuss with the product managers and UI designers, not with the programmers, and this is not an appropriate place to do so. Please discuss all UI related questions in one of the non-API-related forums:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/this-forum-is-for-revit-api-programming-questions-not-for/td-p/5607765

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

ankofl — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 14:17:23 GMT

Hi @Moustafa_K !

It worth noting, Tab View has a trigger that resets the style to its default color. This means upon switching to another view Tap the colors are rest. we can over come this case by using the ViewActivated and apply the colors again to the default theme.

May I ask you to explain how you can specify the color of a tab depending on the project associated with it? I know that this is possible, because I have seen similar functionality in other programs, but perhaps you have thoughts on this?

I would like to set the color of these panels not to be common to all open projects (i.e. not depending on whether the panel is active or selected, but on which project it is)

Thanks!

Re: How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

Speed_CAD — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 17:24:17 GMT

Hi ankofl

To do that requires more depth, because it is not possible to do it through the native properties exposed by the Revit API. Here I have placed two videos where you can see what is possible to do, but I am still testing, that is why I have not uploaded code.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/forums/forumtopicprintpage/board-id/160/message-id/79613