Pick/aperture box color - where is settings?

This is for V18. The pickbox with no command or during editing command is white on a transitional gray background, how do I change this to black? In V16 it's black with same background color so there must be some "toggle" somewhere.

Comments

  • I also activated it lately and don't find the setting again to hide it :smile:

  • If you go into the Settings dialog box, you can type "pick" in the search box and then go to all the various settings that have pick in their name or description. That might help you to find it.

  • Yes, I finally found it by Tim's Thread Title.
    I searched for "aperture"

    But so far I see no difference when changing size or on/off.
    (Bricscad config corrupted again or such things)
    Therefore I avoided to comment.

  • In the dwg-world,
    the pickbox is the square box displayed at the cursor position when no command is active.
    As its name tries to convey, entities with geometry that crosses this box will be eligible for being 'picked' ( = selected ).
    The size of the pickbox is expressed in pixels, and controlled by the PICKBOX system variable.

    Once a command has been started, snapping kicks in, and the area around the cursor that is monitored for geometry to snap to, is called the snap 'aperture'. The size of this aperture box is also expressed in pixels, and controlled by the APERTURE system variable.
    The display of the aperture box can be switched On/Off using the APBOX system variable.

    The color of the pick- and snap aperture-boxes is dynamically controlled by the application in order to provide a good contrast with the background color.

    Hope this helped to get rid of some confusion...

  • Richard Sands
    edited January 2018

    The color of the pick- and snap aperture-boxes is dynamically controlled by the application in order to provide a good contrast with the background color. _
    @Hans is that new in 18?
    I've asked about such when working with aerial images and how it's virtually impossible at times to see where the cursor is.

  • Hello Richard,

    this is not new, as far as I know it has been like that since V1.
    Over time the related code has been revised a couple of times to improve the contrast.

  • The color of the pick- and snap aperture-boxes is dynamically controlled by the application in order to provide a good contrast with the background color.

    Ok, but how do you change the color so it doesn't get lost in the 3d gradient background? In V16 it's black at least per my settings but V18 has it white and I can't always make out where it is until I click or hover over an object. Am I making sense? Could attach a pic but don't think it'll show what I'm getting at.

  • If the pickbox color is different between V16 and V18, the first things to check are the background color settings BKGCOLOR and BKGCOLORPS: are they the same? Do you compare using the same drawing?

    If you have the impression that V18 behaves incorrectly, can you please file a support request?

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    edited January 2018

    Tim, you can't set the pickbox color. You can only set its size (PICKBOX). It sets its own color as you move it around the screen, always trying to be a color that contrasts with whatever color it's on. It's always been like that.

    You CAN set the colors of the crosshairs (COLORX, COLORY, COLORZ) as well as their size (CURSORSIZE), but the crosshairs also have some of that anti-chameleon behavior. A white crosshair becomes black when it's on a white or yellow area of the screen. On any given screen color, some crosshairs colors won't do that anti-chameleon thing as well as some others.

    If you're having trouble seeing where the pickbox is, you might try making both crosshairs white (and then experiment with other colors if that doesn't work) and at least 30 in size.

  • Note that if you are using a background color 8 ( grey ) you get a white cursor But if you choose 252 ( almost the same grey ) you get a black.
    This might help you. Im guessing you place a white picture in a grey background.

  • Hans, don't think it's a problem with V18 but probably need to adjust my background colors. I'll play around with this and see what happens.
    Thanks everyone for the responses!

  • Ok I can confirm using same template & gradient background colors still the aperture/cursor different color with V16 & V18. See attached images. There has to be a setting somewhere deep in the bowels of Brics to change this. I know this may seem trivial but me being the control freak that I am it's driving me nuts. Ok feel better now......

  • Ok for those who might be interested "CrossHairDrawMode" set at 1 makes the aperture black at least for me. The info on the settings below:

    CrossHairDrawMode Meaning
    0 Use Windows rendering
    1 Undefined at this time
    2 Use RedSDK rendering

    What else this changes going from 2 to 1 I have yet to see.

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