Color text or layer properties in drawings?

scott_caskey

When are we going to be able to add color to our dimension text or other text on drawings?  Layer properties?
I'm constantly amazed at how clunky OnShape is when you get to the 2D drawing phase. 

romeograham

Drawings are certainly missing some things, but almost every single release, Onshape adds functionality.

For color options:

If you open the Drawing Properties pane on the right side of drawings, you'll find some options:


You'll find line weight & style options, as well as color options for dimensions, notes, title block elements, etc.

tim_hess427

In addition, there are a few preset layers - If you right click on an element, you can select "move to" and choose Border Frame, Border Zone, and Title Block. 

It is possible to get creative with those and have certain colors and line weights assigned to each. 

For example, one of my drawing templates doesn't have anything in the border zone. So, if I have annotations I want to apply a certain color to, I can move them to the border zone layer, and apply my color to that layer. 

kai_yang

Any updates? Changing drawing property or moving to drawing border layers are not solutions. Text and dimensions should be able to change colour on the fly. Custom layers should be enabled. The displayed colour should also differ from printed colour. For complicated drawings, it is a good practice to have dimension and tolerances in different categories to be displayed in different colours.

PeteYodis

@kai_yang We have a planned improvement to handle applying different styles to collections of annotations in a drawing that would move them off of the drawing defaults as defined in the properties panel.  The properties panel was always designed with the intention to handle drawing global defaults, and is not the intention to be handling specific annotations that might differ from that.  We also don't want to introduce a layer manager aspect to cover what you want here as layers often have fundamental limitations of some things that you may want to control as a part of this.  Just like our properties panel, where we really hide the mechanisms of layers, variables, and styles and let you simply control what you want and not have to care about the underlying mechanisms - our solution for controlling individual or collections of annotations away from the drawing default, will work in a similar manner and simply let you change things and get the appearances you want without needing to manage the underlying mechanisms we may be using.  

matthew_stacy

romeograham said:

If you open the Drawing Properties pane on the right side of drawings, you'll find some options:

@romeograham, thank you for that reminder about the drawing properties icon.  I suffered a lapse of memory yesterday and couldn't recall where to set dimension precision.  Thanks for the reboot.

Luke_Edwards

@pete_yodis If OnShape does not improve on independent layer functionality then a huge percentage of OnShape's customers will flee back to AutoDesk. This is an imperative part of Technical specification and drawing management that is missing - and as a user it is extremely disappointing. 

Unless I am missing something - I cannot seem to add an additional layer in the 'Formats' category under the properties menu which, typically is where I would add such an option. So 90% of my original template is incredibly hard to read by comparison to the template I issue on AutoCAD.  It's not 1980 anymore... Regardless of typical drawing standards we need the ability to change colour quickly and effectively. (I do appreciate this may be in the working - or hopefully so) but it is a big issue.

ryan_mcgoldrick47

this is needed, we use this to highlighted any dimensions and notes that have changed from the previous release including revision symbols. recently reworked the drawing templates so we can switch from an A4 to A3 if needed after creating without too many issues which meant removing the Border Zone layer we had previously been using for revision colour red changes. Now we have no functionality to do this which has been an in house communication tool for decades.

macy_dehart

I am having a very hard time figuring out how to change text color on my latest drawing, although I am just a beginner. I do not have a "drawing properties" option for some reason and I only have "sketches" not "parts", so my search on YouTube was also unsuccessful. Thanks for the help!

S1mon

Sounds like you haven't created a drawing yet.

Going through the learning center would probably be a huge help.

The Fundamentals page has self paced courses on a number of subjects including drawings:

https://learn.onshape.com/learn/course/fundamentals-detailed-drawings/starting-a-detailed-drawing/starting-a-drawing

macy_dehart

I am having a very hard time figuring out how to change text color on my latest drawing, although I am just a beginner. I do not have a "drawing properties" option for some reason and I only have "sketches" not "parts", so my search on YouTube was also unsuccessful. Thanks for the

S1mon

@macy_dehart
Did you create a drawing or are you talking about sketches? It sounds like you haven't created a drawing yet.