Changing Colour Cycling Colours

[docara]

Hello everyone,

Just wondering can you change the colours of the 'Component Color Cycling Toggle' ?

The reason for asking is I've ended up having three components together with the same (or visually the same) colours. I've applied appearances to overcome but it's just a bit annoying when the component cycling is a nice environment to use (it should be the default)

Thanks

Matt

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @docara,

Today, unfortunately, there is no way to change the color cycling colors - either the colors themselves, or the assignment of a color to a component.  That assignment is done in component creation order, and yes, it is possible to have components that are physically near other components of the same color.

One thing which we have considered internally is to just increase the number of colors in the list.  I think there are only 10 colors currently.  That would only decrease the frequency of the problem you are seeing.

What would be your ideal solution here? 

thanks,

Jeff

[docara]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the reply.

I think the pastel colours the team have chosen are really nice and work well by the way.

Um I think the most useful and nicest method would be to allow the user to have control over the colours designated by the system. Additionally, perhaps have an enlarged colour swash / colour picker available to choose from. This would also help people who might have some forms of colour blindness to see their work properly.

This would be most intuitive by right clicking on the little colour bar next to the component.

The only other way I could foresee would be interrogate the assembly, say, to search for clashes and change them which I reckon could be a coding nightmare with such a limited palette.

Matt

[jeff_strater]

Thanks, @docara.  Good input.

Yes, you are right that automatically trying to resolve conflicts with adjacent components is going to be difficult.  So, we will probably not going to try to do that.

I understand what you are asking for - the ability to say, "when I am in component color cycling mode, I want this component to be green, and this other one to be blue".  If you step back a bit, how is this different that just applying a color to your component, using the Appearance command?  Do you want to be able to apply two different colors to your components?  One for Component Color Cycling, and one for "normal" mode?  I guess the main difference is that in cycling mode, the swatches in the browser and timeline match the colors of the components themselves, right?  I wonder whether we could just try to distill the browser/timeline color swatches from whatever appearance is applied to the component.

I did put in a request for the short term to increase the number of colors.  While this is not what you asked for, it will help to reduce the number of times that we hit conflicts.

Jeff

[docara]

Hi Jeff,

You make a good and very valid point when you mention the appearance workflow, I do think, and my impression is (perhaps naively), that they are both two distinct functions or modes of operation.

• The first being render / display / final presentation type modes - where you want to know how will things look when completed, so you would use specific colour, textures or appearances.
• The second being in the drawing (Model, Patch etc) mode, where clarity is important where you need to see the distinct entities and possible boundaries between components. Whilst I've not tried it, what would the result of the sectional analysis if adjacent colours where next to each other (presumably there's a Hatching direction algorithm at work). 

I have a slight grumble with perhaps a related issue which could perhaps also get sorted (depending on how others feel of course). I have never liked the fact when you first start jumping in to 3D extrude revolve whatever, Fusion assumes it is going to be metal, so multiple components bodies are grey or shades of grey and then have to be changed to something to see them clearly - as mentioned above (2). Would it not be preferable to start in 'Component Color Toggle' mode so 'things' can be easily seen THEN we change the appearance as we see fit to suit the end product. 

Matt

[docara]

Hi Jeff,

I would be interested in your feedback 

Matt

[jeff_strater]

Thanks, @docara, for the feedback on this topic.

You raise a good point about the difference between assigning colors for the purposes of the design (all your components may be made out of the same kind/color of plastic, for instance), vs the Component Color Cycling mode, which is really more of a tool to help you determine component boundaries at a point in the design where you don't necessarily care about the final appearance.  So, my suggestion of just using Appearance for this probably is not as good as it sounded to me at first.

Yes, the sectional analysis does obey the component coloring, which is helpful.

Your "slight grumble" is an interesting suggestion.  One thing we have struggled with in Fusion is its mix of "part modeling" and "assembly modeling" in a single environment.  So, it's hard to tell whether you are doing "part stuff" or "assembly stuff" at any given time.  Starting in color cycling mode might not make sense if you are doing primarily part stuff, but it might make sense if you were in the flow of doing other assembly stuff.  We struggle with this in other areas as well.  Should Move default to Bodies or Components?  Should a new design start with an empty child component active?  Should Extrude on an empty design default to "new component" or "new body".  The short answer is:  we don't have a good answer.  Personally, I like your suggestion, and often I will switch on color cycling, and leave it on for days.

Back to the original request:  Yes, it might make sense for color cycling to be more of a user-controlled and persistent thing.  Have an environment where you can auto-assign colors, but shift them around if you need to, and have those colors stick.  I did not see this on the Fusion IdeaStation.  You should add it there.  The closest I found was:  color-cycle-by-sub-assembly

Jeff

[diogorsergio]

One quick win.. could be to force new random colours. 

Shift+N [On/Off]

Alt+Shift+N [Cycle Colours] at least you would be able to cycle through some random combinations and find some that might be useful. 

[chrisplyler]

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@jeff_strater wrote:

Your "slight grumble" is an interesting suggestion.  One thing we have struggled with in Fusion is its mix of "part modeling" and "assembly modeling" in a single environment.  So, it's hard to tell whether you are doing "part stuff" or "assembly stuff" at any given time.  Starting in color cycling mode might not make sense if you are doing primarily part stuff, but it might make sense if you were in the flow of doing other assembly stuff.  We struggle with this in other areas as well.  Should Move default to Bodies or Components?  Should a new design start with an empty child component active?  Should Extrude on an empty design default to "new component" or "new body".  The short answer is:  we don't have a good answer.  Personally, I like your suggestion, and often I will switch on color cycling, and leave it on for days.

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Ahhhhh, user defined templates....

You know, the notion that a user could set up his preferred options/settings and save the combinations as a starting point for future designs, and could have more than one such template saved so that he might choose all his preferred options/settings depending on the usage case of the design he's about to begin.

[alexandwirtz]

Was this feature removed? I thought I had seen it earlier, but can't find it again. I thought there was an option to cycle component colours while "component colour cycling toggle" is active.

Can someone point me to this feature?

Thanks

[jeff_strater]

as far as I know, there has never been a way to change the colors used in Component Color Cycling.

[cstevens_mettest]

There is a way to manually cycle component colors in Fusion. Simply Right-Click the component and scroll down to the Cycle Component Color option.

[lukas-runge]

Hello everybody, Hello cstevens_mettest,

i can't confirm that this feature exists yet - I am not seeing it in my Fusion360.

I am running on Win 10 with Fusion Verison 2.0.7036. Fusion 360 tells me that it is up to date currently. Have you done anything special to unlock this feature?

Thanks already for your help

Kind regards

Lukas

[jeff_strater]

@lukas-runge - this is not a part of standard Fusion, as near as I can tell.  That menu item must have come from an add-in of some kind.  The only access to component color cycling is to enable it in the Inspect drop down - which applies to all components in the design:

[laughingcreek]

I turned off all my add ins and restarted fusion (and checked that non were running), and I still have the "cycle component colors" referenced in post 12 on my machine.  I wonder where it's coming from?  I would like to know  so I can report to the author it doesn't change the color of all the linked copies of a component, just the one selected.  I think it should change all of them.

[jeff_strater]

wow.  I have no idea where that came from.  I don't think it's part of Fusion itself, and I don't seem to have it in my context menu.  Do others see this?

[laughingcreek]

the only add-in I regularly use is mstsketch.  I can't imagine it's adding that command into the menu.  perhaps @Anonymous  (author of mstsketch) will come by and verify it's not related to his add in. 

[Anonymous]

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@laughingcreek wrote:

the only add-in I regularly use is mstsketch.  I can't imagine it's adding that command into the menu.  perhaps @Anonymous  (author of mstsketch) will come by and verify it's not related to his add in. 

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It shouldn't be related to my app - at least not by design.

[HughesTooling]

@jeff_strater  It's been in Fusion For ages. My thread on UI bugs brought up problems where it's missing from some workspaces. Also I'm using a PC not sure if mac has the same menus. See second post in this thread.

Mark

EDIT. Should point out the obvious, you need to have Component Cycle enabled (Shift+N).

[cstevens_mettest]

I disabled all of my add-ons, reloaded Fusion and the option to cycle component color still shows up. I'm wondering if it is a preview feature that others might not have selected? The option to cycle component color does disappear when component color cycling is turned off so maybe that is what is causing the issue. The add-ons I have are : 100KGarages, MakeTime, parts4cad, and Proto Labs.