An exploration into the Icon theme
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- MisterMaker
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:41 am
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
It is symbolic but it's a bit of a hassle to put so much into so little pixels.
That theme idea of big red arrows and such, is a great idea but it should be a theme on itself. My goal is to be more industry standard. Which is a bit boring but we want to get people to use Freecad and this is in my opinion a good way for luring those users to Freecad.
There is some logic in the copy geometric icons.
Like the sync are 2 green lines moving towards each other to sync.
The fix are 2 broken reference lines that make a cross.
Freeze has the color of reference geometry, since that is what it is after you freeze it, just a reference line.
Now I am reading all comments I just prefer pumping out icons instead of focusing on the difficult icons, often idea's pop-up after you took a bit of distance from it.
So in that expect, I spend some time on the constrains and dimensions.
And yeah, dimensions are just constrains with distances. BUT YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
So they get a different color, probably lots of long time CAD users agree with me on this, since dimensions and constrains are almost always separated from each other. Although having 3 extra colors for constrains is bit of a nightmare, I really need to get that color pallet plugin!
For the TLDR here some pictures: Before and after, be aware that image compression ruins it a bit. The icons in the sketcher are super sharp.
That theme idea of big red arrows and such, is a great idea but it should be a theme on itself. My goal is to be more industry standard. Which is a bit boring but we want to get people to use Freecad and this is in my opinion a good way for luring those users to Freecad.
There is some logic in the copy geometric icons.
Like the sync are 2 green lines moving towards each other to sync.
The fix are 2 broken reference lines that make a cross.
Freeze has the color of reference geometry, since that is what it is after you freeze it, just a reference line.
Now I am reading all comments I just prefer pumping out icons instead of focusing on the difficult icons, often idea's pop-up after you took a bit of distance from it.
So in that expect, I spend some time on the constrains and dimensions.
And yeah, dimensions are just constrains with distances. BUT YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
So they get a different color, probably lots of long time CAD users agree with me on this, since dimensions and constrains are almost always separated from each other. Although having 3 extra colors for constrains is bit of a nightmare, I really need to get that color pallet plugin!
For the TLDR here some pictures: Before and after, be aware that image compression ruins it a bit. The icons in the sketcher are super sharp.
Last edited by MisterMaker on Thu May 12, 2022 7:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- adrianinsaval
- Veteran
- Posts: 5541
- Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:15 pm
- MisterMaker
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:41 am
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
Does anyone have any thoughts about these icons:
Solidworks:
Inventor:
creo
You bet I am going to axe the KDE icons
Solidworks:
Inventor:
creo
You bet I am going to axe the KDE icons
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
Yes, my pet PITA is "Open" icon which looks confusingly similar to "Group" icon.
Would love to make them more distinct?
- MisterMaker
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:41 am
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
Browsing true other CAD programs it seems like some kind of derivative from the windows default icons is the way to go.
It's also logical to-do since we already have the Linux icons, and so giving user the choose between the 2 would be nice.
If you are a mac user, make your own
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
That is what I was talking about
It would be desirable to avoid similarities like this
It would be desirable to avoid similarities like this
- MisterMaker
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:41 am
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
I don't have that icon, I guess it is the open directory in my release it doesn't has an icon as you can see below.
This is my first go at the icons.
I was really struggling with the disk color. Black isn't good visible with the dark theme, and gray looks similar to the grayed out symbol. So I ended up with blue. I am not sure if dark blue has enough contrast with the dark theme
It looks better on the white theme. But I realized icons for white theme are in general easier as you have better contrast.
- MisterMaker
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:41 am
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
Ok some after some nice people bought my icons I bought the Blender addon and now I can easily make new theme's. As to test the addon I recreated the default theme. I think the saturation is still a bit too low. Bot I keep going to high and too low, it's a bit difficult to get it precisely right.
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
So cool, but can you help me to understand how buying the blender addon helps you make freecad themes?
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Want to contribute back to FC? Checkout:
'good first issues' | Open TODOs and FIXMEs | How to Help FreeCAD | How to report Bugs
- MisterMaker
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:41 am
Re: An exploration into the Icon theme
It's a color managing addon, without it I had to manually change ever material color. I had too go true every shader change the color, and save the last color somewhere in the case I wanted too re-use it.
Now I can make a color pallet give it a name and just switch too it. Basically a 30 minute job of switching themes changed to 1 second.
Blend file will still work without it but you are back to manual color switching.