Is this english?

[Anonymous]

Hi

I was looking for a way to change the color of an unconstrained line on a sketch from cyan to something else. I have solved that issue.

But... as I was googling for a solution I came across the following text at the link posted below. Is it just me or the text doesn't make much sense. For some reason I cannot help but think that it's a translation from another language or something along those lines. Nonetheless this is not the first time I have come across such garbled English whilst looking for help on the official Autodesk help site and I have found it slightly frustrating.

The text:

"

Issue:When creating a sketch , colors have already constrained and unconstrained lines can be confusing , because you want to change the color is it possible ?

Solution:

You cannot customize to any combination of background and color lines, sketch.

On the graphics screen sketch elements of any selection after, from the right mouse button properties at each change you need.

"

Link:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcartic...

[salariua]

A lot of the knowledge base articles have been auto-translated to English from other languages.

[salariua]

and BTW that is very close to English.... compared with this one:

check the link text and the page contents:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/.../sfdcarticles/-----------------------------.html

Edit:

I think the original article must have been Klingonian which was available on autodesk websites at some point. Too bad I don't speak any.

[Anonymous]

Be that as it may, it is still rather frustrating to be googling for a solution to an issue you need fixed yesterday, to find no forum entries and only one or two KB entries that make absolutely no sense.

I'm not the grammar police, I can accept that typos and the likes can happen, but both KB articles are the worst examples of written English that I have seen since I was 12. (that's when I supposedly began learning English).

Regardless of the articles' origin, they ought to be read through at least once by a human with a medium understanding of the English language before they are placed online. As it is at the moment, the presence of such articles in the KB denotes an utter lack of interest.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Guys,

Many thanks for reporting these issues! These are good catches! The paragraphs are nonsensical and not helpful. I will work with project team and make necessary changes.

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnson,

thank you for your reply.

I'm looking forward to finding out how to change line color without affecting the differentiation between constrained and unconstrained lines (in a sketch). I have found a work-around that I will be using for the time being but that's not ideal.

🙂

[salariua · Accepted solution]

Did you try ColorSchemeEditor?

Need to install USERTOOLS from : "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 20xx\SDK"

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi Johnson,

thank you for your reply.

I'm looking forward to finding out how to change line color without affecting the differentiation between constrained and unconstrained lines (in a sketch). I have found a work-around that I will be using for the time being but that's not ideal.

🙂

---

As stated Inventor includes the color scheme editor to allow you to modify colors for each of the color schemes..

But I may be reading between the lines (pun intended) here but it seems like there is a little more to your request than just modifying the color schemes.. 

If not then yes "Inventor Color Scheme Editor" works fantastic.. 

[Anonymous]

Hey Adrian,

domo arigato gozaimasu!

That looks pretty much like what I was thinking about. I don't have time at the moment, as I'm home-bound in less than 5 mins but I'll definitely have a look at that took, looks very very interesting.

Thank you again 🙂

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Inventor 2D Sketch has two coloring paradigms. By default, the colors are dictated by Color Scheme (Tools -> Application Options -> Color). Individual line color can be overridden via Format commands. In 2D Sketch environment, go to the right most section click downward arrow to expand Format commands. There you can assign a different color to selected sketch geometry.

I wish Inventor had Layer control in sketch environment like in AutoCAD. It would help manage sketches more efficiently.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnson,

thank you for your reply.

After some digging I did yesterday, I did manage to find out about that way of controlling the sketch color scheme and that's the half-solution I actually applied to turn the painfully invisible cyan (for an unconstrained element) to a darker blue.

I call it a half-solution for the following reason: cyan is used for the color scheme Wonderland. The darker blue is used for a scheme called Winter Day. The thing is, I have a little problem with my eyes, not sure what's causing it, but I am using my laptop screen at about 20% brightness, I skinned windows 10 with windows blind to a dark red appearance and Inventor uses the darkest grey I found without it being black. (that would be the Wonderland scheme). But Winter Day's background is too light for my eyes. So I'm in a bit of bind: dark background good, cyan bad, lighter background bad, dark blue good. Thus I was looking for a way to customize a little bit.

The trouble with your proposed solution is that, while it does allow me to change line color, it overrides the very useful color differentiation between a constrained and an unconstrained element. An added downside is that this method is either bound to a sketch or to a part file, don't exactly know which, but it most definitely is not global (which would require me to make this change over and over again.)

So I am going to have a look at Adi's suggestion and post again with the results 🙂

Again, thank you for your help.

[Anonymous]

Hello Adrian,

thank you very much for your solution yesterday.

I had a look at it and it worked like a charm, it did exactly what I needed it to do and the process was surprisingly hassle-free and quick.

I just wish that the SDK tool was placed somewhere a little bit more visible. I mean, I can see why it's hidden, it's usually not a good idea to give users the possibility of customizing some aspects of an application because sometimes bugs occur. (the species created and fostered by people who, like DD from Dexter - the cartoon network cartoon -, wonder: "What does this button do?" and then click it just because they can... I've been on the fixing end of such bugs and the most fun part is when you ask the user what they did and they look at you with big moist innocent eyes and then tell you "I don't know, it was like that when I got there!"). Still it would have been nice to know about it 🙂

Now I know though!

Thank you again 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi McGyver

thank you for your reply and sorry I didn't notice your post before.

As I just explained to Johnson, I have issues with my eyes. For some reason though that only affects me when I am working on my laptop at school, in the classroom. At home, I'm utterly fine. Due to  this, I use very low brightness on my laptop screen and I avoid bright colors or stark contrasts, so that my laptop looks muted red and grey (when I use inventor). (I've no clue why the laptop screen does this to my eyes, it's a brand-new Lenovo e470... The screen I use at home is a 8 years old Benq led screen that has never allowed me to read on it (articles or forums) for more than an hour without giving me a headache but, for some weird reason, that monitor allows me to work perfectly with CAD programs and to game... for usually around 16 hours a day without getting eyestrain. So I cannot help but blame the neon lights at school...)

The issue was that yesterday I realized that whenever I was drawing in a sketch, I had to squint really hard to see the cyan lines (from the Wonderland scheme) that were used for an unconstrained line. And that squinting is, along with the neon lights in the room, responsible for my eye strain. So I decided to have a look at changing it, which made me stumble over the "English" issue with the KB article I posted at the beginning of the thread.

And yes, thanks to Adrian and you, I have now solved my issue via the color scheme editor. 🙂

Thank you 🙂

[salariua · Accepted solution]

I tend to keep my color scheme as default.

When answering forum questions people get confused if you use anything else than the standard colors, however, I did change my background color and force a custom image (white) on a color scheme that didn't have this option.

I have copied a standard existing image and filled it white.

[Anonymous]

Hi Adrian,

thank you for your reply.

Let's assume that I'm not weird but merely extremely light-sensitive (I tend to squint even on days with light cloud-coverage and therefore outdoors I wear shades 90% of the time). A white background kills my eyes no matter what machine I work on. The only device I can live with black text on a white background is a kindle without illumination. So yes, ideally I could get a 22" e-ink monitor. (If wishes were horses, beggars would ride). But since the only company offering them (let us not mention the price here) is Chinese and thus does not inspire a lot of trust, especially since - last I checked -  the monitors were on pre-order, I take whatever shortcut I can find: Windows Blinds from Stardock to skin not just windows but backgrounds for text editing applications like word, excel, wordpad, scrivener, coffeecup etc. Unfortunately the blinds do nothing for Inventor, which I suppose is fine, especially now that I have the option of customizing Inventor separately.

But a white background? Not an option for me.

Still, I can see what you mean about screenshots, colors are the first reference points most people use when they are attempting to locate unfamiliar aspects of software they are not confident with, I know I do it.

Now that I think of, I was a little bit daft actually. I knew about the possibility to change the background image to whatever you wish, so theoretically speaking, I could have simply chosen my flavor of gray and use Winter Day. Still, now that I have SDK, I can play around with it for a bit, should I suddenly find myself again in need of color changes.

So yes, changing the background image is also a way to skin the proverbial cat.

Thank you "muchly" for your help. 🙂 Now I think I have a good chance of finishing my shelf 😛