Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Revit 2015 R2 - Background Color

Continuing in the theme of filling long standing wishes, it is now possible to choose your own background color instead just using Invert Background to use a black background. Years ago I did attempt to live with a black background but found that I preferred the white background after a short transition. I find trying to use a black background quite disorienting now.

Regardless lots of users have a preference for something other than white. In particular, for some people, staring at a white screen all day bothers their eyes. Adjusting their monitor's brightness and contrast only goes so far to mitigate their discomfort. Now they/we can choose nearly any color we'd like to use instead of white, via the Graphics page of the Options dialog.


It is a bit quirky depending on what is visible in the view. You'll have to experiment some to find both a color you really like and can live with how information is presented in different views with it in play. Here's what I call Word Perfect background with some rooms using a color fill (well I remember a blue background in Word Perfect).


And this is casual attempt to mimic "butter" tracing paper background.


I'm probably going to stick with a white background but I'm sure there are many users who will enjoying having a little more control over what they stare at for 8+ hours a day.

10 comments:

Aaron Maller said...

We switched everyones default here to 250/250/250. Its still "white like we are used to in Revit" but its much less harsh on the eyes.

Steve said...

My graphics card must not be sophisticated enough (the screen capture says it isn't a recognized card even though it used to be) to show a difference between 250,250, 250 and "white"... I have to use 249,249,249 to even begin to see a change.

Aaron Maller said...

Could be the screen and/or the Monitors, too. On our Dell Ultrasharps you can see a slight difference. But it is pretty minor.

lliW said...

My solution is a little more extreme. If I know I'm going to be using Revit for extended periods I use a 'Black' background. This massively reduces eye strain straight away!

There is however a negative to black background - elements in 'Hidden Line' graphic display inherit black as their surface colour, adversely affecting their appearance in 3D, making it particularly hard to see shadows if enabled.

To elevate this I simply use 'Shaded' mode in 3D views instead of 'Hidden Line', as this mode isn't affected by background colour. As long as your material colours are set up correctly, 3D views on drawing sheets appear clear in black & white hardcopies.

Allen Jay Holland said...

I have never heard a worker say, "This white background in Outlook (or Excel, or Word) hurts my eyes!"

I believe that for most people this claim is just a "psychological crutch" on to which they want to hold.

Users experiencing eye strain should take frequent breaks, and give up the crutch.

I appreciate that 2015 gives the ability to tone down the intensity and gives me the ability to mandate "No more black screens!"

~AJH

imscuba said...

Did they remove this option? I had set it fine, but when IT brought me a new computer today the option is gone in Revit 15. I called IT and we installed release 9 thinking it was just that I didn't have the updates and I still do not have that option.

Steve said...

It is still in 2015 R2 and 2016. It is not part of 2015 Release Update 9 when the special subscription only R2 release is not installed. R2 is a pre-release of 2016 features that do not require a code change, so 2015 files are compatible with 2015 R2 files.

imscuba said...

so what are you saying i need to do to fix this? i tried to find on an update that simply said 2015 R2, but could not locate it. is this something different that had to be done during installation?

imscuba said...

so after talking with IT he found that to install R2 after update 9 has been installed you need to uninstall Revit 15, reinstall and make sure to install R2 before any of the updates after 3

Steve said...

Yeah, that's the issue. I wrote this post about it in the past.

http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2014/12/revit-2015-release-update-5-and.html