Change screen background for Layouts

Barry Adkins

I found fairly quickly how to change the background screen color (to black) for the model space view, but I cannot find how to change the background screen color in a layout (to black).

Sorry if this should be obvious.

Barry Adkins

Louis_Verdonck

Dear Barry

Yes, I'm afraid it is quite obvious: the setting you are looking for sits in the Settings dialog, just below the setting that controls the screen background in model space. If you are looking for a setting, the best way to find it quickly is to use the search field of the Settings dialog. Choose Settings in the Settings menu or click the Settings toolbutton on the Standard toolbar. Type a keyword in the search field, in your case 'background'. BricsCAD immediately jumps to the first setting that matches your search criterium. Press the down/up arrows to go to the next/previous match until you find the setting you are looking for.

Background color in paperspace is controlled by BKGCOLORPS. If you type the name of the variable in the search field, you go straight to it.

Kind regards

Anthony Apostolaros

Here's a background toggle command, which changes black background to white and white background to black, in model or paper space:

(defun c:BB ()

  (if (equal (getvar "TILEMODE") 0)

    (if (equal (getvar "BKGCOLORPS") 7)
       (setvar "BKGCOLORPS" 0)
       (setvar "BKGCOLORPS" 7)
    )

    (if (equal (getvar "BKGCOLOR") 7)
       (setvar "BKGCOLOR" 0)
       (setvar "BKGCOLOR" 7)
    )

  )

)

Joe Dunfee

Thanks Mr. Apostolaros for that lisp routine.  

I have some customers who always work with black background, and then choose colors that show up well on the black background.  But, as you certainly noticed, a yellow line is very easy to see on a black background, and hard to see on a white one.  

The customer uses a special pen definition to print properly, but of course that pen definition file never gets to me.  To make matters worse, many objects have colors set for specific entities, and some are embedded multiple levels deep into a block. 

This whole idea of using black backgrounds comes from the days when you never output in color.  Now that color printers are the norm, I strongly suggest that any company using black backgrounds when they create drawings, change over to white.  I know it will take time to convert their block library over, but if you never change, then your block library will only accumulate more items that need to be fixed in the future.

For the customer I mentioned, it is not unusual for me to spend a half hour or more trying to clean up their drawings. In the future, we are going to start charging them for this service.