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?

[Anonymous]

I didn't find any tutorial talk about changing color of sketch but you can watch this video from 3:31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19KzHow1EpE

[Anonymous]

Thank you. The video only confirms that all lines of a fully defined sketch
become BLACK, including the dimension lines.
Black lines were changing blue only when he selected them. Once deselected
they are black again.
The sketch shown in the video is extremely simple, no problem seeing what
you are looking at. But when you deal with sometimes over a hundred lines
with a hundred dimensions, it becomes a web in which it is impossible to
see what is a sketch line and what is a dimension line.
Unless Fusion gives you the freedom to change the default color of
dimension lines, or they make dimension lines of different color than the
sketch lines, the software is for armatures only who design very simple
things.

By the way - one think makes no sense in this: *dimension is a constrain*.
So no matter what, it cannot change from unconstrained to constrained. So
why is it black as if *dimension* became *constrained* all of a sudden? It
IS always a CONSTRAIN. I hope you follow my drift 🙂

[SaeedHamza]

Hi,

Dimensions color can't be changed, but lines can

There are 4 colors for lines according to the case :

Black if fully constrained

Blue if not fully constrained

Green if fixed

And There are the construction lines ( dashed orange )

So you might try changing some to fixed or construction lines to make things easier visually if you have that many lines

Regards

[Anonymous]

Ha, ha, ha!  I like your sense of hunor! 

Unconstrain all the lines and delete half of the dimensions in a sketch of a jet turbine to make them change color. Yap, that would make modifications to a sketch a breeze.

Just not sure if my boss would be as enthusiastic about it as I. I guess I could as well start looking for a new job 

[SaeedHamza]

No man, you go me wrong 🙂

I'm just reminding you what the lines in F360 are

And when I said to use the construction lines ( dashed line ), I meant something like this ( screenshot below ), although it's still black due to constraining, but might make things easier for you

Regards

[Anonymous]

Appreciate your help. I did understand you well. I also use construction lines. Many of them. What you are showing however is extremely simple - all the lines could be black including dimension lines and it would still be perfectly clear.

Now imagine you are working on a large engine. Just one section or sketch you are working on has a hundred or more circles, plus two hundred lines, plus construction lines, fillets, chamfers and every of those lines, circles, fillets and chamfers are fully constrained and dimensioned.

You cannot delete the lines that don't take part in extrusion because they will be needed to show how the sketch was created so someone can modify it correctly in the future.

And now you are this someone who must modify certain features in an engine design. When you open a sketch that requires modifications, all you see is hundreds of lines that are heavily masked by dimension lines of the same color and width. You cannot freeze or unconstraint anything because this is the company policy. Everything must be fully constrained = black.

All the CADs that I know allow you to have dimension lines of different color so you can see the sketched shape unobstructed by dimension lines.

I'm not sure if the pictures I'm attaching will show well. They represent a very simple sketch but it shows the problem. One picture shows just a sketch. The other shows the areas selected for revolving. Now imagine you have about 30 times more sketch lines and 30 times more dimensions... All of them black.

Regards,

[TrippyLighting]

If you try to design stuff with that many sketch items in Fusion 360 then you are using

1.  the wrong methodology and

2. the wrong software

The inability change the color of the dimensions is unfortunate, agreed, but on its own it is hardly a factor that makes Fusion 360 an Amateur software.

Trying to compare a software that is free for many and costs $300 subscription a year with software packages that jet engines actually are designed with and often range into the multi $10k range makes  no sense whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

With all due respect but I must disagree.

Price tag does not have to be an indicator of how sophisticated the software is. Especially that most CADs are way overpriced, not worth the money companies charge for them.

In this respect Fusion 360 was a fresh and welcome change.

Fusion 360 runs on dozens of years of experience of Autodesk so there is no reason it should be viewed as a **** of CAD. The Autodesk heritage is what makes people trust it and be willing to give this software a try. Frankly - this is what I and many others though of Fusion 360. Finally a sensibly priced decent CAD package that we can adopt for our future use. A CAD that one day may even become a standard.

It's not up to me or anyone else to try to understand what the business model of Autodesk is in respect pricing of Fusion 360. If advertised as CAD that can do what all other CADs do plus MORE, why should we be accepting its shortcomings? It would be a very different story if Fusion stated clearly: NOT suitable for professional use. But no, they promote it as being in the same league with other, more expensive CAD packages. CAD, CAM, Simulations... you name it. My time, the time I must spend to learn the software is of value. If this CAD is only "half CAD" I need to know it before I consider investing my time into it.

Finally - the features we are discussing are not sophisticated functionalities. We are talking about basics. The ability to customize the default color of dimensions! One would expect that Autodesk is experienced enough to understand the importance of it. I'm not buying the argument that this is needed for designing space rockets only so we should go easy on Fusion. Why easy?

I've designed an entire Wankel engine, and I built one as a hobby. At this moment I don't see how I would be able to do it with Fusion. And we are talking... a hobby project.

I just hope that I don't have enough experience with the software. I really hope so because there are certain features of it that I like.

[FrankCao]

Hi ANDREW.J.DEC,

Thanks for posting this issue. Actually we have been aware of this problem in sketch environment internally and we are still investigating different ways to solve it. For example, one way of solving this problem, might be to make the sketch line/curves a bit wider so that you can easily distinguish between the sketch lines and dimensions.  

We are still trying and testing different solutions and hopefully this issue could be solved in the future.

Regards,

Frank

[Anonymous]

Thank you Frank. It's nice to know that you are aware and working on this
issue. I truly hope you will offer a solution soon.
A bit wider sketch lines (as default) would make a great improvement if
changing dimension line color is not feasible for some reason. Better yet,
make sketch lines a bit wider and grey out dimension lines a little.
As for me - I would still prefer different color for dimensions.
I can't wait to see these improvements before I finally settle on my future
CAD.

Regards

[CGPM]

I too was looking for ways to change the dimension colors again 2 days ago.  This would be very handy, and perhaps a way to temporarily hide dimensions like "isolate".

[pavhofman]

I am a very beginner in CAD but the same line color of dimensions and correct (i.e. fully constrained) sketch lines makes even my simple fusion360 sketches very confusing. Honestly I do not understand the reason for keeping the dimensions same color. Fusion360 has so many great features which had to be extremely complicated to develope and code (all the fast rendering, keeping the history of changes with 100% working undo etc.) IMO it would be trivial to change color of the dimension lines compared to all these sophisticated features.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

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@Anonymouswrote:

Especially that most CADs are way overpriced, not worth the money companies charge for them.

---

I would like to see your calculation for this statement. 

[hilgenbergalex]

Same here, keeping all in black is very confusing. 

I am not alone who is looking for how to change the color.

Can somebody go ahead and write an AddOn for it. I would donate 5 Dollar...

Alex

[Anonymous]

I would donate $500 for this. As a matter of fact I had to switch to a different CAD so I can work on a new project. It became impossible to continue designing in Fusion because of that.

In sketching all dimensions and wireframes are black. Often times I need to design while in assembly so all I had in front of me was one black wall of lines. Absolutely no way to see what I was doing. I'm a guy who grew up drafting in ink - all black. Yet even I couldn't handle this. There should be an option that allows wire-frame lines to assume the color of the respective parts.

I can work with millions of lines as long I see by color which line belongs to which part. Of course - dimension and sketch lines should have different colors, and different from wireframe lines in the background.

Not having this issue resolved we had no choice but to go back to the old CAD. I'll go back to Fusion once this is taken care of. 

Don't take me wrong - it is possible to design in Fusion even if all the lines are black. But only simple parts, no designing with assembly in the background, and primarily using many simple sequential steps. 

I'm waiting for this to change so we can use Fusion for serious projects too.

[Anonymous]

Ability to change dimension line color or thickness would be beneficial. As others have stated, dimension lines and sketch curves look too similar at present.

[chrisplyler]

@FrankCao 

Instead of trying to decide how to display sketch entities versus dimensions/constraints...how about giving the USER some color/thickness settings?

[HughesTooling]

Hadn't noticed this problem before this thread but I use the grey room environment where dimensions are green and lines are pink for unconstrained and white for constrained. It is odd the other environments use a single colour.

Mark

[TheCADWhisperer]

This issue was solved by Autodesk in Autodesk Inventor years ago.

In fact, I cannot recall if it ever was an issue in Autodesk Inventor.

The Fusion developers should walk "across the hall" and communicate with their Inventor co-workers.

Communication among teams within a company - now there is a novel idea!