OT: Autocad Help

I am trying to do a simple modification to a couple of drawings in autocad and i have never used autocad before.

The ladder drawing is in many different colors and is hard to read on the screen. Why so many colors?

How can i just make white lines on the black background so i can edit these drawing without getting a headache?

I just need to turn the colors off.

It might be easier to change the background to black for viewing. The colors can be "by layer" or "by block" or individual to each object in the drawing. If they're "by layer", changing the color of the layer will change everything assigned to that layer with color properties set "by layer". Depending on how your menus/ribbons are set up, you should be able to find the layers menu and click on the drop-down then double click on the layer color to change it.

What version of Autocad are you using?

Hi
I like my background to be black, i find it less of a glare after a few hours of work

in many cases the original drawing was done in "layers" with a different color assigned to each layer ... if that's the case, then you can probably turn some of the layers OFF temporarily - and eliminate much of the clutter that way ...

another way is to select ALL of the elements in the drawing – and then change their ATTRIBUTES so that the color is "white" ... this is probably only going to be doable IF (big IF) all of the elements are drawn in one layer (or at least in a very few layers) ...

I'd be CAREFUL with this approach though (and make a GOOD backup copy before you try it) ... once you've changed all of those colors to white, you might find out later that you wished you had them all back again ... sometimes those different colors are used to indicate "line widths" etc. while printing ...

in short – you're asking a simple question – but there is no one simple "fit all" answer ...

It may actually be very simple. Down the bottom of the screen you can see two small tabs, one called "model" and the other called "layout". You want to click on "model", which is black background and not "layout", which shows the arrangement on the printed page.

Definitely save a copy to play with first.

The Model and Layout tabs can be assigned unique background colors. Ron's advice is reversible if all of your objects are assigned to a color = "By Layer". Just select an object you want to change and open its properties. (CTRL+1).

Then add to your selection while the properties window is open. Keep an eye on the Color property and notice that the properties will apply to all the objects you have selected. Keep adding to the selection set and when you add an object with a direct color, the color field will change to "Varies".

If all the objects look appropriate when you change the color to "By Layer", then go ahead ans select them all, set them to white like Ron said.

Then, when you're done, change them back to By Layer.

You may notice that your components and objects may contain sub-elements whose properties are not modified by the parent object color="By Layer".

For that reason, changing all the Layers' colors may work out better for you.

If the object is set to a fixed color, I usually change it to By Layer even if it needs to be moved to a different layer to please me or added to a new layer.

If you are using Autocad Electrical, then be careful creating layers and moving things to different layers as you may "break" any references to wire layers, terminal points and references.

and some more advice:

if the original drawing was done with a lot of colors, just bite the bullet and learn to deal with it ...

in many cases, the colors were put there for some sort of reason ... once you've discovered the pattern of WHY they were used, then it might make things better to preserve the colors and use them to your advantage ...

Ron Beaufort said:

and some more advice:

if the original drawing was done with a lot of colors, just bite the bullet and learn to deal with it ...

Click to expand...

Like 7% of American males, I'm color blind.

Color coding lines on a drawing within limits can be useful. Unfortunately, a lot of draftsmen get carried away with the new toy. (To a two year old with a hammer, the entire world looks like a nail.) A few bold, easily distinguishable, colors can add to the information conveyed, but too many colors or too many shades with slight differences make the whole exercise pointless. To those with more severe color blindness than mine the whole color coding thing can be pointless.

Remember, much of the time a drawing is used in a printed output or a copy of a printed output. These are usually black and white. If the draftsman wants to use color codes to assist him in creating the drawing that's fine, but he shouldn't count on the colors to convey info to the people using that drawing.

as always, there is no simple "one size fits all" answer ...

Remember, much of the time a drawing is used in a printed output or a copy of a printed output. These are usually black and white.

Click to expand...

this brings up a point ... personally I use the colors (only three or four) to represent different line widths - that show up when I print the page in black and white ... sort of like BOLD – or VERY bold – etc. ...

you can adjust the line widths (based on color) in the printer setup ...

Colours were originally used for old plotters which had a few (4 in my case) different coloured pens which would move on 1 axis. The paper would move on the other axis, so you got slow drawings as you would draw them yourself. These were fun to watch. Each different colour related to a different pen (see the plot dialog box). This meant you would assign red to pen 3, yellow to pen 4, etc so you could make up your drawing (most had black for all and red for dimensions).

Now that everyone uses inkjet type printers, different colours are still assigned to different pens, with one reason for different thickness' of lines when printed. I know you can use solid, but this is faster when regening the drawing.