Sketcher - color blind user palette?

[Adeux]

Hi - first post

Does anyone know if someone has set up a colour blind user palette for the default drawings - complete novice here converting from autocadd and sketchup

Thanks
A2

[NormandC]

Hello Adeux,

Welcome here. I split your reply from the Sketcher dimension number size topic because it was not really relevant to the discussion. But mostly I think it deserves its own topic.

This subject has come up once or twice on the forum, unfortunately I believe nothing came off of it.

[Adeux]

Thanks - Typical Newbie Mistake.

I am 55 (maybe) and was told many years ago that I was colour blind - Cant remember how but recently I was advised that I am as colour blind as you can get in Red Green which I believe is the most prevalent (as opposed to blue - of which I can tell you nothing) type.

I use Autocadd professionally and just avoid certain colours until I have too. So my accurate laying out avoids contrasts of red and green side by side. Then it is not beyond anyones imagination that I eventually recolour a layer to whatever colour I am required to (as I am no longer interested in its interpretation) and send the drawing off.

I can see red - I can see green but on a screen that is transmitting at me it seems very hard to distinguish them and they seem "live" and interfere with one another.

So immediately I saw red dots on corners on green selected lines and tried to make sure what I had selected was red or green then confusion and squinting ensued.....and the obvious conclusion that the programmer/designer has full colour vision....

So for your interest it isnt so much the use of red or the use of green but their combination that causes issue. eg red black red blue is fine etc - although I imagine that red grey is possibly as problematic as red green.

An off subject example is that grey cars drive towards me from a distance and eventually they turn red or green once they have sufficient light on them and from a closer distance at a greater intensity.

Not helping matters is a what I call a psychosomatic response which amuses me in that once I am told a colour is red or green then I stop misinterpreting it. Although I would never attempt to pick out two contrasting greens from a colour chart if they were only one or two tones apart - I just hand the colour chart to the client and make a note of the RAL RGB CMYK etc - I even use programmes like colorpic to do the work for me.

So my initial question is "Is there a colour blind default palette" and why would I not just alter colours to suit - well because it is no longer a default and as a learner I hope to read up about your newly found programme and follow instructions but if I am using odd colours (or cannot see them) then I will have to wing it and use trial and error instead.....hmmmmm or give up.

Thanks for listening
A2


NB I recently have seen games with a tick box colour blind palette

[quick61]

Hello Adeux,

I have a friend that is color blind like you, (Red/Green), and am aware of some of the challenges you must be facing. Like Normand has said, there is no default pallet, but you can change the default colors to what works best for you.

You can find these settings in Edit > Preferences..., and in the following subsections.

• General - under 'Editor' and 'Output window' tabs.
• Display - under 'Colors', 'Part color', and 'Sketcher' tabs.
• Draft - under 'Visual settings' tab.
• Arch - under 'Defaults' tab.

May I submit that when you get what you feel are ideal color settings, you make note of them all, (their html #) and submit them as a feature request for a default Red/Green color blind setting. Placing a Checkbox or pulldown in the general tab or some such place to set the default color scheme should be doable. Once the ticket is posted, perhaps one of the devs, or one of our talented contributors will pick it up and get it done in time for the next release.

No promises on that last sentence, sense FreeCAD is developed 100% by people volunteering their spare time, but getting that info and filing a feature request on Mantas is a big first steep.

Mark

[jmaustpc]

Hi all
Some interesting information on colour blindness....

1) very few females are colour blind ...it is far more common in males
2) there are many different types of and different severities of colour blindness...but red/green is by far the most common
3) red/green colour blindness is suffered by men, but carried by their daughters...so the grand son of a colour blind man, via his daughter will be likely to also be colour blind, where the colour blind man' children will not likely be colour blind and his grand children via his sons should also not be colour blind
4) the total percentage of males with some type and some degree of colour blindness is approximately the same as the percentage of computers users that have a Apple computer.

based on 4) you could argue that if we support Mac then we should also support at least the red/green blind.... ....of course we already do support the colour blind of all types by making the colouring in FreeCAD adjustable in the options.

The only thing I see as a bit of a problem for the colour blind in FreeCAD is that the icons colours are not changed. I (or someone) would have to write a new set of icons with different colours for each type of colour blindness. This would be a bit of work but not all that difficult as it is just a matter of changing all the colours. Nearly all the icons should be either SVG or xpm files, apart from the 'Ship" icons in Gimp format. I went through FreeCAD and wrote new svg icons to replace all the png and most of the xpm files. SVG and XPM files are just text files, so it would be possible to "search and replace" the text values of the colours with some sort of automated script of some sort.

and why would I not just alter colours to suit - well because it is no longer a default and as a learner I hope to read up about your newly found programme and follow instructions but if I am using odd colours (or cannot see them) then I will have to wing it

We can't help the colours in the videos, but you can set your colours to whatever you like, it will not effect your files at all so you will have no problems exchanging files etc. All it does is change the colour that FreeCAD displays in your copy of FreeCAD, unless you colour the actual solids themselves.

[sliptonic]

I'm not color blind but we had problems with the default palette when we were writing the freecad book. The images wouldn't reproduce on paper well. I came across a thread somewhere on the forum and used this layout. I ended up sticking with it as my default because it's so much easier to see.



Use a gradient with a middle color.
Top RGB 151,201,205
Middle 255,255,166
bottom 125,134,133

[bejant]

Greetings Adeux, welcome to FreeCAD and to the forum!

May I submit that when you get what you feel are ideal color settings, you make note of them all, (their html #) and submit them as a feature request for a default Red/Green color blind setting. Placing a Checkbox or pulldown in the general tab or some such place to set the default color scheme should be doable.

If you come up with a color scheme that works for you, you can also make note of the settings and post back to the forum here. If you don't want to make a Mantis ticket on the bug tracker, I don't mind. I'd like to see some screen grabs (if it's not too inconvenient for you) of your results.

[mario52]

hi

The only thing I see as a bit of a problem for the colour blind in FreeCAD is that the icons colours are not changed. I (or someone) would have to write a new set of icons with different colours for each type of colour blindness. This would be a bit of work but not all that difficult as it is just a matter of changing all the colours. Nearly all the icons should be either SVG or xpm files, apart from the 'Ship" icons in Gimp format. I went through FreeCAD and wrote new svg icons to replace all the png and most of the xpm files. SVG and XPM files are just text files, so it would be possible to "search and replace" the text values of the colours with some sort of automated script of some sort.

there was a discussion Freecad Logo Doodle and I proposed the system Xnview (and other ...)
you choose or build your personal model

Modele_Xnview.png (104.38 KiB) Viewed 4807 times

mario

[looo]

For me it was also very hard to distinguish between selected and not selected vertex in sketcher. After changng the selection color to blue it's fine for me.

[Adeux]

Thank you all for your responses. As I have got better at freecad I have become less dependent on the colours. Though I must say the colours posted above are very clear and I will instigate that change as I am sure that will be of great assistance.
Thank you all and sorry for my tardy response.