Highlight color when selecting sketch profiles

[Anonymous]

I searched the forums but could not find an answer for this problem I am sure others have as well: it is almost impossible for me to distinguish the color of a selected profile in a sketch from the other profiles. When directly hovering the mouse over the first selected profile, my eyes often can distinguish a slight change in color. As soon as I have selected more than one profile, I can hardly see what's already been selected and what's not.

The overall problem has been mentioned before: I belong to the 10% of male population suffering from a weak color sight. While I can distinguish colors, it gets very difficult when they have a similar I could not find any way to change the color theme for to reflect my kind of color vision.

While it would be nice, I do not need a fancy color theme editor. If you would just point me to an XML file where I can edit such colors, I am fine! Searching the forums, I found a reference to a "greyroom.xml", which unfortunately I can not find in my installation (Windows, if that matters).

I love Fusion360, but this problem severely damages usability for me and surely for others. See for example here for others noting it -- the comments there apply as of now just as they did in 2016. If you want to address this issue: in general  it is a good idea to use colors of a different lightness for highlighting something. We (the 10% of male population suffering from this) really appreciate the aesthetic ambitions of user interface designers who'd love to draw everything in harmonic and pleasing mixture of pastel color tones -- just an option to switch to a theme with actual contrasts would be all needed to make us happy 

[josh]

I too am having a similar problem and just replied to a few posts about it this morning before I saw your comment. I attached a sample XML file for the Environment I am trying to modify (Mac). But the windows version of this XML seems very similar. I was also able to find the XML files on my Windows machine at the office. I would post that windows filepath here for you to help you find it if I had my PC in front of me. I can get that for you on Monday.

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh, thank you very much for your help. I found the file in my installation, and will start playing with it. (I now found the other posts you mention, sort of embarrassing, I definitely didn't search enough ...). Thanks again -- if I find a good setting, I'll let you know

[jeff_strater]

Hi @Anonymous,

Could it be possible that you have your selection style set to "Simple" under the Graphics section in your preferences?

I admit that the selection differences in this mode are subtle and hard to distinguish.  However, if you set your selection style to "Normal", it becomes much simpler to tell what is selected:

So, that is the simple answer to how to make it easier to distinguish selected profiles.  I have not yet found what controls the color in the "Simple" style, but my guess is that it might be hard-coded in the software.  If I find an entry, I will let you know.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much, it indeed was set to simple -- I never noticed this
setting. Setting it to normal does help slightly (to my subjective
perception especially when setting Environment to Dark Sky, but maybe I
just make this up ...). This is very helpful, thank you!

Still, I really think Autodesk should complement the color themes with some
higher contrast ones -- my color weakness is rather low, a high percentage
of male population (and, thus, also a rather high percentage of engineers)
suffers much more from this problem.

Jost

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much, it indeed was set to simple -- I never noticed this
setting. Setting it to normal does help slightly (to my subjective
perception especially when setting Environment to Dark Sky, but maybe I
just make this up ...). This is very helpful, thank you!

Still, I really think Autodesk should complement the color themes with some
higher contrast ones -- my color weakness is rather low, a high percentage
of male population (and, thus, also a rather high percentage of engineers)
suffers much more from this problem.

Jost

[Anonymous]

Hi @jeff_strater,

when I tried your suggestion and answered this morning (well, german morning) I had only seen a mobile view of your post, which didn't show your screenshots. Now that I see your screenshots, I notice that I did not get what it shows there: even when in normal mode, selections of a plane in sketch mode are *not* highlighted blue (which would be absolutely perfect and completely solve my problem). 

I'm at work now and can't try as I haven't got Fusion here yet, but is it possible that I have to restart Fusion after changing this setting? In that case my subjective perception that it became better might just have been psychology playing a trick on me ... I'll try tonight and mark the problem solved as soon as I see the blue selection.

Really looking forward to this -- it's amazing I've been using Fusion for a year, grumbling quietly on the color scheme and not asking, and it might be that easy 🙂 

@Anonymous Did you try it like this?

Jost

[Anonymous]

Ok, got hands on my Laptop and tried, but it just does not work like @jeff_strater said: I switched to Selection Display Style Normal and this is what I get, even after restarting Fusion. It's even worse with Tranquilit Blue environment -- I don't have a blue weakness, so I really think that color theme is dysfunctional. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? If I had it like in the screenshots by @jeff_strater, I'd be so happy! 

[josh]

I can also confirm that when in "Normal" selection display style, my selected sketches are not filled by blue. Whether or not I am in "normal" or "simple", there is no change to the selected sketch fill color. I tried this both on a Windows and a Mac machine. Same orange fill result no matter the display style setting.

[jeff_strater]

I don't have an explanation for what you are seeing, to be honest.  It could be a graphics driver issue.  Let me check with the graphics team to see if there is some other setting that controls this, but all the graphics settings are supposed to be on that tab.  Have you tried changing the other settings?

As far as what to change in the PhotoBooth.xml file, I don't have a great answer there, either.  I did find that if you tweak the entry called "SketchProfileColor" from ARGB="0.15 1 0.55 0" /> to ARGB="0.5 1 0.55 0" />, the results look slightly better (you are changing the transparency of the profile display to be more opaque).  Here is the result:

More later...

Jeff

[chengyun.yang]

Hi,

Regarding the normal selection style doesn't work for you, can you please check if you also turn on the option "Limit effects to optimize performance" in the Graphics diagnostic dialog? If you do, please uncheck it otherwise the normal selection style will not take effect(since it affects the performance a lot). 

Thanks

Chengyun

[josh]

Alright, I finally got this to work. Graphics>Display Selection Style=Normal....then make sure the Limit Effects to Optimize Performance box is unchecked under the Graphics Diagnostic in the Help menu. For some reason this box was checked for me and now I get the blue highlighted selection as mentioned above. This blue highlight is exactly the kind of selection contrast I was looking for, thanks!

[Anonymous]

Sigh 😞 I'm glad you solved it, but I seem to be still far from it.

I did exactly what you did, so my preferences look like this:

and still my highlighted faces in sketches look like this:

This is in environment Photo Booth, which is still best. With the transparency tip by Jeff it's  a little better, but I'd really prefer that blue selection color you got!

Thank you all for the help -- but @chengyun.yang @jeff_strater, please don't give up on me yet 🙂

Jost

[chengyun.yang · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

Can you go to help menu->Graphics diagnostic dialog and check if the "limit effects to optimize the performance" option is turned on on your machine? It is located close to the bottom of the dialog.

Thanks

Chengyun

[Anonymous]

Chengyun, that worked, fantastic, thank you very much!

I think this setting should be accessible from the Preferences > Graphics dialog -- I think Help > Graphics Diagnostic is a little hidden ... I would never have found it there 🙂

Thank you thank you thank you!

Jost