How to change default dimension color in a sketch

[Anonymous]

I cannot find anything under preferences that would allow me to change default dimension color in a sketch. 

All my lines and dimensions become black. When working with a complicated part that involves dozens of lines, fillets, etc., the outline of a sketch becomes almost illegible because it is next to impossible to tell sketch lines from dimension lines. There should be a way to make the color of dimension lines different from sketch/part lines. 

Can anyone help?

[Gelunox]

Update to my earlier post. I made a PowerShell script to speed up the process. Save it as a ps1 or paste it directly into PowerShell console:

$fusionEnvironment = "DarkSky"
$dimensionColor = "1 1 .3 .75";
$dimensionDrivenColor = "1 .75 0.2 0.5";
$dimensionInfoColor = "1 1 .5 .75";

$file = Get-ChildItem -Path $env:LOCALAPPDATA/Autodesk -Recurse -Filter $fusionEnvironment | Get-ChildItem -Filter "$fusionEnvironment`.xml";

(Get-Content $file) -replace "<SketchDimensionColor ARGB=`"[0-9\. ]+`" />", "<SketchDimensionColor ARGB=`"$dimensionColor`" />" `
    -replace "<SketchDrivenDimensionColor ARGB=`"[0-9\. ]+`" />", "<SketchDrivenDimensionColor ARGB=`"$dimensionDrivenColor`" />" `
    -replace "<SketchDimensionInfoColor ARGB=`"[0-9\. ]+`" />", "<SketchDimensionInfoColor ARGB=`"$dimensionInfoColor`" />" `
    | Set-Content $file

[kb1]

Here in 2024... As if Autodesk never made it possible to customize the color of dimensions. I'm switching from blender and trying to find a CAD alternative. I'm following the learn fusion 360 in 30 days tutorial. I'm on the paperclip tutorial and I cant even see what lines belong to the paper clip. 

Free CAD however allows full customization of color. And also has a dark mode since people really love that stuff.

Its sad that a program that has so much potential has so many user inconveniences. This is my first day trying it and I don't know if I want to continue. 

I mean I want to continue, however id also like to be able to customize the measurement color and use dark mode like many other users. 

Jeez, 8 years later and no solution to these issues.

How many more inconveniences will i run into 

[kb1]

This is a tolerable solution, thank you. However, the browser tabs look really ugly now.  I still think autodesk needs to listen to their customers and make a dark mode / color customization.

[m_jN7NAR]

I'm totaly new to both 3D and Fusion but I ended up here in the 30 days training och the paperclip practice getting messy simply with a few lines. This problem should be so easy to solve (comming from a deverloper perspective).

[aleksei_ovsienko]

I second the request for thorough color customization. After a lot of googling I found a way to make my background black (basically you have to edit RGB values in the config files for environment setups buried deep in the Fusion folders but you can do it). Then I had to dig through the config to customize line colors. Then a Fusion update rolled in that set everything back to default and I had to do it again. But this time I backed up the file. Jesus wept... Why does it have to be so hard?

[TheCADWhisperer]

@aleksei_ovsienko 

Can you use one of the other built-in color schemes?

[maruska]

in the xml file, you can change

<SketchDimensionColor ARGB = "0.6 1 1 1" />

 to what ever color you want as an Alpha, R, G, B value.

[aleksei_ovsienko]

Yeah, I figured it out, thank you. Made dimension lines hot pink and defined sketch and sketch entities white against the black background. I see some people made the journey like 9 years ago and Fusion still hasn't budged on introducing this into preferences. And each time an update rolls in it defaults my settings.

[maruska]

I made a thing - it might be useful to those that are already hacking their xml files (I'd like to port this over to an Add-in at some-point).

It's a little web based tool that generates an xml snippet that can be used to change the look of viewport elements. There are 80 some values in the xml that need changed and many are interrelated. This tool classifies and groups the colors into semantic categories meaning less hunting around for what thing influences what.

https://github.com/jmaruska/Fusion-Viewport-Theming-Tool

you can play with it here:
http://dev.maruskadesign.com/fusion-viewport-themer/index.html

There are some values that are static, and I don't yet address the alpha values of the colors, but the xml it generates is highly commented so even editing it by hand is easier if that helps.

 

[aleksei_ovsienko]

That's pretty cool. I can see it generates an xml but it doesn't look like I can just copy and paste it. If I do it Fusions crashes on launch. I guess I'll have to edit existing xml using the values from your generator step by step. But it's still much better than guessing RGB values. My only change would probably be to not use white for constrained sketches because it lacks contrast against whitish part faces like Aluminium. Otherwise it's great stuff. See no reason why it's so hard for Fusion developers to implement it in preferences.

[aleksei_ovsienko]

Tried the values from your XML generator, didn't change anything, just used what you have there. It crashes Fusion on start. I tried pasting the values in the original XML one by one. Maybe I missed something, I don't know. Maybe something is conflicting there. I'm using PhotoBooth theme as my test monkey. I started hacking it because it had a better lighting setting. Could you perhaps share your own xml? I could look into it and see what exactly I do wrong here.
I already came up with a workable solution by changing background to black, dimension lines to pink and constrained dimensions and sketch entities to red. But I'm trying to improve.

[maruska]

Yeah - the generator currently only creates the code after </DisplayName> but before <Simulation> in your environment XML file - so just the middle chunk. I've attached an XML that I use - but keep in mind I have a bunch of other customizations, however the file structure is generally the same. I also "pretty print" mine for readability.

Also check out https://github.com/jmaruska/Fusion-Viewport-Theming-Tool/tree/main/Development-Tools/XML-Visualizer which allows you to load your existing XML and see ALL the color assignments. It's not an editor, but it at least allows you to see what XML tags map to what colors (it's what I created so I could make the more semantic editor).

But to your point, it took me an afternoon to make all this - not sure why we can't have something similar inside Fusion. The API doesn't currently allow users to read/write these files from an Add-In (but I'm still looking at less manual workarounds).

[jhackney1972]

I would like to see how you are able to run your XML-Visualizer.  Using the GitHub instructions, it does not seem to work,  Maybe a little demo video.

[maruska]

you should be able to download the archive from Git then open index.html in your browser. you'll see a webpage that looks this. The "choose XML File" button allows you to pick an XML (like DarkSky.xml) and it'll show you all the UI colors used for that theme

[jhackney1972]

Does not work for me.  Your GitHub instructions say to open the HTML page in my browser.

When I do this, this I get a very large page with all sorts of links and folders, none of which can be follow according to your above directions.

Again, a short video, from you, on the process would be helpful.

[maruska]

correct. GitHub is a repository. You can't run directly from it. You need to download the archive so you can run the files natively in your browser (or put them on a web server)

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/working-with-files/using-files/downloading-source-code-archi...

edit: you need to download the whole archive - the index.html only opens the app in your browser - the actual app logic is in the javascript. so you need all the files.

[aleksei_ovsienko]

Ok. So now that I more or less figured out the colors I'm curious as to how to change lighting. I've noticed that out of all stock themes pretty much only PhotoBooth has my model brightly lit. All the others are different shades of dark.

[maruska]

yeah that upper third of the xml is all lighting control stuff.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-design-validate-document/better-modeling-viewport-rendering/td...