Work on modern icon theme

[st_phan]

@st_phan your WIP looks amazing!

Having modern professional UX really really helps push the Freecad project forwards.The psychological benefits, Freecad seems less scary to new users. But also to potential contributors: It shouts 'this project is going places!'

Thank you very much for the kind words! I really hope that a bit of visual touches help make it appear more professional.
And in the future ideally of course make some additions to the UX itself

Please do a miracle for that Std_DrawStyle icon: after 2 years using FreeCAD i still need a couple of seconds to catch it in the toolbar!

Haha thanks for the info – I am on it :

test_draawStyles.png (62.63 KiB) Viewed 4724 times

————


I have now some 60+ icons ready. Mainly for the start and part / part design workbench:

icons_current.png (123.21 KiB) Viewed 4724 times

I am still focussing on steady progress which is also why many icons look somewhat wrong when imported in FreeCAD.
This is due to sloppy exporting (strokes not outlined, bad use of opacity, etc.).

I am posting it here in any case, if somebody wants to give it a try already:

Demo.rcc.zip

(19.66 KiB) Downloaded 237 times

You have to install the IconThemes-addon and use the Demo.rcc inside the .zip as explained in the repo – if installed correctly you can select the Demo.rcc which adds the OpenIko 0.1.0 (working title) to FreeCAD:

icons_addon.png (48.38 KiB) Viewed 4724 times

FYI: This is what the icons look like right now:

Screenshot 2020-06-07 at 23.14.30.png (170.91 KiB) Viewed 4724 times

CC

[triplus]

Have just tested it, nice progress.

[st_phan]

Small progress update:

Will be hard to see, but I started exporting correctly because I am happy with the style:
(I also discovered the available themes and the icons look really nice with the bright theme )

icons_current.png (63.7 KiB) Viewed 4431 times

I am not entirely sure what the best approach is since there are maaaaany icons to be done ...
My current plan is to finish all general UI icons + the ones for the workbenches "part" and "part design" and then see from there.

[carlopav]

definitely really clear... i'd like it to be the default theme

[czinehuba]

Keep up the good work. Really nice

[fc_tofu]

Very delicious icons.

[triplus]

I am not entirely sure what the best approach is since there are maaaaany icons to be done ...
My current plan is to finish all general UI icons + the ones for the workbenches "part" and "part design" and then see from there.

Sounds like a plan.

P.S. Note that i haven't made much progress reports in icon themes thread, but i am working on the things discussed.

[st_phan]

definitely really clear... i'd like it to be the default theme

Really glad to hear that you like 'em. If others from the community also like them we could make them the default once I am done

Very delicious icons.

Thanks <3

Keep up the good work. Really nice

Thanks!

I am not entirely sure what the best approach is since there are maaaaany icons to be done ...
My current plan is to finish all general UI icons + the ones for the workbenches "part" and "part design" and then see from there.

Sounds like a plan.

P.S. Note that i haven't made much progress reports in icon themes thread, but i am working on the things discussed.

Cool! Really looking forward to that
FYI: I noticed that some icons didn't get applied or sometimes applying in general wasn't working, but I couldn't properly reproduce yet – once I know more I'll post there in the icon themes thread!

[st_phan]

For those that are curious how I work on icons:

(1) Normally I search for reference:
Of course the current FreeCAD icons, but normally what the commercial software world is doing (which I didn't find for the walled object merging)

(2) Then I note what I think could be enhanced:
For the walled object merging for example that they looked very 2D (even though it's a 3D operation), that the style doesn't work well in small size (contrast and gradient) and that the red looks a lot like deleting the entire outer surface.

(3) I then make many variations until I am somewhat happy which involves a lot of copying and pasting (progress from top to bottom):

Screenshot 2020-06-21 at 18.49.19.png (311.7 KiB) Viewed 4149 times

(4) Once some more icons are done I export everything and use it a bit to see if they work well in the application:

Screenshot 2020-06-21 at 19.06.42.png (95.43 KiB) Viewed 4149 times

(Don't work that well in a small size, but getting there )


———


Of course I don't do this for all icons. E.g. most of the 2D sketch icons are super straight forward (once the style is found):

Screenshot 2020-06-21 at 18.55.40.png (48.05 KiB) Viewed 4149 times

[triplus]

Thanks for sharing your design workflow.

P.S. Yes, a good design in the end usually takes a lot of work invested and involves extensively trying things out. Similar to coding and most of other tasks in real life!