How to change Revit ribbon tab color?

[jmmiller.southlandind]

I am currently struggling with changing the color of  tab header on the Revit ribbon. I have attempted to source answers from The Building Coder's Pimp my AutoCAD or Revit Ribbon blog among others, but have been unable to get the results I am seeking. As you can see from the image below I can get the panel background to color using a TabThem. The TabTheme has allows me to set TabHeaderBackground and TabHeaderForeground, which I would have thought would be what I was looking for. I would have expected my below code to color the panel background and the tab header orange. 

I would be grateful for any advice anyone could offer to point me in the right direction to getting the tab header to change color. 

            adWin.RibbonControl ribbon = adWin.ComponentManager.Ribbon;

            LinearGradientBrush gB = new LinearGradientBrush();
            gB.StartPoint = new System.Windows.Point(0, 0);
            gB.EndPoint = new System.Windows.Point(0, 1);
            gB.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(Colors.Orange, 0.0));
            gB.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(Colors.Orange, 1));

            Autodesk.Internal.Windows.TabTheme myTheme = new 
            Autodesk.Internal.Windows.TabTheme();
            myTheme.PanelBackground = gB;
            myTheme.TabHeaderBackground = gB;
            myTheme.TabHeaderForeground = gB;       


            ribbon.FindTab("BIM TOOLS").Theme =  myTheme;

[jeremytammik]

The Revit API and the Revit user interface do not support this.

All I know is in the article you pointed out.

[jmmiller.southlandind]

@jeremytammik  thank you for the quick reply. You indicated that Revit user interface does not support this feature. Is there any other method you are aware of to change the tab header color? I ask because my inspiration to try to figure out how it is done was derived from an add-in that has the tabs colored. Please see image. 

Also, for my own education. If the TabHeaderBackground and TabHeaderForground are not controlling the Tab, do you have any idea what they do control? 

[RevitBuilder43]

Try a similar solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0PXfTu7xyw

[RevitBuilder43]

Try a similar solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0PXfTu7xyw

[Omar_Amen]

Interesting question, any updates or work-around way ??

[jeremy_tammik]

I repeat the answer I gave above:

The Revit API does not support this, and the development team have good reasons for this decision.

I you wish to violate the standard Revit UI standards, you can refer to the article discussed above.

[RevitBuilder43]

This functionality is now available in the Autodesk App Store.

Download: https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/ru/Detail/ColoringTabs

or here: https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/ru/Detail/Index?id=6172229355984601104&appLang=en&os=Win64

[JamesPark_Acad10]

Unfortunately, Autodesk has removed that app.

Autodesk:  we need to have the ability to change tab colors !!!

[jeremy_tammik]

You could submit a wish for this functionality to the Revit Idea Station. Whenever you require a new or enhanced Revit product or Revit API functionality, the Revit Idea Station is the place to go. Please search there for a corresponding wish list entry for the suggested functionality and add your comments to it, or create a new one, if none already exists:

• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/idb-p/302

If it is a pure API related wish, tag it as such:

• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/idb-p/302/tab/most-recent/label-name/api

Ensuring that a wish gets as many votes as possible helps underline its importance to you and the rest of the developer community. The Revit Idea Station is currently one of the main driving input forces for Revit API enhancements. The Revit development team looks there. Your comment here in the discussion forum might be overlooked. Thank you!

[Speed_CAD]

Hi,

Yes, that's possible!

[rmaxiluna]

PyRevit has a tool for colorize tabs, 

[tuah_edu]

I believe the original question is to colorized the add-on tab itself, not opened Revit tabs. But this pyRevit feature is indeed a nice to have when you constantly have multiple .rvt .rfa files opened in a Revit session.

[maisoui]

@Speed_CAD Ok, nice, but how? Can you share your code snippet please?

[Speed_CAD]

Hi maisoui,

Sorry, I hadn't seen your message. I had left aside the code to change the color of the Ribbon tabs, a week ago I resumed this development to customize the Ribbon tabs and added a command search engine, all of this to test and it is taking good shape. I am also customizing the document tabs.

[Moustafa_K]

Well the answer to this a bit long, are your ready!

Short version

All in all, it is doable, but i wouldn't recommend much playing with UI styles.

Based on my personal experiments, I found that customizing view tabs in Autodesk Revit can enhance the design flow and make the UI more intuitive. I personally do it for myself satisfactory. Although there is no official documentation, these techniques can help users manage Styling the UI.

Revit's UI is built with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), allowing for property changes such as background colors. The key to UI customization is the ApplicationTheme class in the UIFramework assembly, which controls most Revit themes.

 

I have documented what I was able to figure out, it was good experience to see all these UI controls how they behave and connected together.

To change the color of View tabs, modify properties like CanvasActiveTabNormalBackgroundColor and CanvasActiveTabHoverBackgroundColor:

var appTheme = UIFramework.ApplicationTheme.CurrentTheme;
appTheme.CanvasActiveTabNormalBackgroundColor = Colors.DarkRed;
appTheme.CanvasActiveTabHoverBackgroundColor = Colors.DeepPink;

For more details "Long version Answer", refer to my full article on this topic.

[ankofl]

Can we find out at least one of these "big reasons"? Reasons that run counter to the interests of a large number of users?

[jeremy_tammik]

That is something you would have to discuss with the product managers and UI designers, not with the programmers, and this is not an appropriate place to do so. Please discuss all UI related questions in one of the non-API-related forums:

• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/this-forum-is-for-revit-api-programming-questions-not...

[ankofl]

Hi @Moustafa_K !

It worth noting, Tab View has a trigger that resets the style to its default color. This means upon ... 

May I ask you to explain how you can specify the color of a tab depending on the project associated with it? I know that this is possible, because I have seen similar functionality in other programs, but perhaps you have thoughts on this?

I would like to set the color of these panels not to be common to all open projects (i.e. not depending on whether the panel is active or selected, but on which project it is)

Thanks!

[Speed_CAD]

Hi ankofl

To do that requires more depth, because it is not possible to do it through the native properties exposed by the Revit API. Here I have placed two videos where you can see what is possible to do, but I am still testing, that is why I have not uploaded code.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/forums/forumtopicprintpage/board-id/160/message-id/79613