Dark mode

[Anonymous]

Hi! Are you expecting to put a dark mode option for fusion 360? The ligh color from the UI hurts my eyes and make to much notority from screen!

[jordan783ZS]

Autocad has had dark mode for years and the fusion devs promised it back in 2018.

[krauken]

Changing the environment changes the background to a much less eye-searing background sure, but it also changes the lighting. Joking aside, people expect to this to behave like all other 3d content creation (and 2d for that matter) tools: Ability to change lighting scenarios separate from the UI. 

Right now, our only option for a "dark mode" forces us also to have crappy lighting and shading on the model. 

[blind.maker]

Yep. A limited subset off the top of my head (okay, and some Googling):

• SolidWorks (SOLIDWORKS Dark Mode - Computer Aided Technology (cati.com))
• OnShape -- with a browser plugin (Looking for a dark theme? Here's how you can get one working using a browser extension (unofficial!)...)
• Creo -- "full" dark is experimental, but very nice
• Siemens NX (easily modified themes)
• FreeCAD (https://wiki.freecad.org/File:216.png)
• OpenSCAD -- incomplete, though
• Basically any CAD for 3D texture modeling, sculpting and animation: ZBrush, Blender, Maya, Houdini, oh and Mudbox (Autodesk)

and of course also from Autodesk:

• AutoCAD
• Autodesk Inventor What's New 2022: Dark Theme - Inventor Official Blog

"A quiet addition to Autodesk Inventor 2022 has swathes of Inventor customers jumping for joy. The reason? Dark theme!"

I, too, would love to jump for joy. With my eye condition, I have no choice but to use the dark environments in Fusion. And white plastic for the material to maximize contrast. And hide as much UI chrome as I can until I can't. And it's still very difficult to use for me. Massive eye strain to the point that they burn and I have to take frequent breaks.

You'd think I'd just change given the number of options. But I like Fusion. I know Fusion. And I'm somewhat locked in to Fusion with work and other collaborators. But holding my breath is a probably not smart idea. The pace of change has been really glacial. There was talk of a massive UI overhaul a couple of years ago, but that seems not to have materialized. I probably really need to consider a new platform. 😞

[j.masonEEQMX]

Thank you for going out of your way to truly point all of that out. It is ridiculous that literally every single competitor of fusion in this market space has this ability. Personally, I'm not against learning a new workflow of it means that workflow will be better on my eyes. 

[brandonmay]

Shouldn't really change what's happening in the 3d space.  Not sure what you mean there.  I'll take SolidWorks (my daily driver) for instance.  I run dark mode exclusively.  But I change the 3d space environment depending on what I'm doing.  I'll go from light to dark and various colors/lighting combinations quite often - but always in dark mode.  These two are not related.  The best implementation of dark mode, in my opinion, comes from none other than Blender.  An open-source product.  It's default is dark.  

Blender - Dark Mode

Here are my typical environments in SolidWorks.  Always dark mode, but I change the 3d environment quite often.  Why Fusion can't do this is crazy.  Requires nothing more than whatever color they chose, to change it.

[TrippyLighting]

---

@brandonmay wrote:

...The best implementation of dark mode, in my opinion, comes from none other than Blender.  An open-source product...  

---

Yep!

The UI is fully configurable, including mouse buttons and keyboard shortcuts and marking menu(s), UI scaling. Not only that, but it also works the same across three different OS Windows, macos & whatever ones favorite Linux distro is!

Edit: It might well be that the Fusion 360 team is working on an implementation of a dark mode. I strongly believe that more transparency in terms of road maps would serve Autodesk very well.

[j.masonEEQMX]

To be honest, that'd be one empty road map. 

[miguelangel_3]

It's not because they can't do it; it is just because they don't want to or even acknowledge it. Probably there is more profitable stuff to do than losing time with some "spoiled DIYers" requirements. Some of us get so much help with that "feature," but left-writers, Dyslexic, photosensitive, wheelchaired, and any "handicapped" don't convey capital. That social awareness some companies shout out loud (especially when it is so) is just mediatic, for pictures and social networks, or when some brand cleaning is needed, or public relations strategists want to distract people from other transgressions. Hopefully, new generations, if they eventually take charge of companies with such a "misanthropy," will have at least a bit of empathy for others.

[j.masonEEQMX]

Yeah except that we aren't all just hobbyists asking for this feature. We are a legit company manufacturing products using Fusion360, we have just started to move away from it, not just because of this reason alone, but because of the overall neglect we have received from the developers in general. As auto desk seeks to cater to the giants in the industry, they will inevitably be less and less interested in fixing things that pose an issue for smaller companies. We're not renewing after we get our work flow completely transitioned to other CAD/ CAM solutions. 

[coast.furniture]

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

[j.masonEEQMX]

Don't you love it when someone like Miguel comes along and tries assert their opinions as if they represent literally everyone? It's bizarre, lord forbid people expect anything of a product that's costs over $500 minimum annually. 

[kylek292]

Dark mode serves a purpose now more than ever (besides user eyesight) with the release of OLED panels into the business market. As those become more common, it will be a necessity for software to adapt because users don't want UI elements retained in their screen panels.

With that said, it is possible this could be something the community could handle if we felt like it as a lot of the UI is stored in plaintext .css or .xml files with .png for the icons, this allows editing it. See screenshot for example (I only edited the button color), but it'd require painstakingly mapping each file to the appropriate parameter/UI elements .. unless you did a Replace All on specific color codes pulled from the UI. The files are located in: C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\webdeploy\production\<VERSION HASH/UUID>\Fusion\UI\FusionUI

It's one of the reasons why Windows has been making a push on it as well at the OS level.

[jordan783ZS]

Not only does it reduce burn in but it also significantly improves battery
life.

[coast.furniture]

Isn't autocad always dark mode?

[ScottWatrous]

Just in here to say I've been struggling with the brightness of Fusion for a while now and I am very disappointed that this thread has existed for so long with literally no movement on the issue at all as far as I can tell. It's not like some impossible feature, or even an odd one. As has been said a dark GUI option has long been a standard feature across all software as far as the eye can see.

It's bad enough we can't customize the environments to choose the lighting and backgrounds, unlike say in Inventor where I really appreciated the light blue/white gradient background and the medium grey GUI. Fusion is just blinding white and on modern screens that can achieve some brilliant brightness and contrast and color, Fusion is just a feast of snow-blindness.

Sure I can choose an 'environment' like River Rubicon and that makes the background a nice cobalt, but that's a whole extra ball of worms in that there's literally no customization options for those environments. And of course the rest of the GUI is still white boxes, so it just looks even worse and makes dark text in little white boxes surrounded by a dark 'background' even harder to read.

[j.masonEEQMX]

Wake TF up autodesk. 

[coast.furniture]

You can change fusion 3d workspace background

[j.masonEEQMX]

This entire thread is extremely clear that is not what we are trying to do, is absolutely inadequate and not a solution at all to our problem. I suggest reading at least a little bit of what is being discussed here. 

[coast.furniture]

I think it is what is called an "interim solution." Personally I just wear
sunglasses because I don't want people to recognize me trying to take
myself seriously while using Fusion 360. It both darkens the screen and
hides my identity

[j.masonEEQMX]

The sun glasses make sense, since the interim solution actually makes the contrasting of the bright window vs the workspace background even worse.