Improvements about Colors

Introduction

Some improvements around Colors have been implemented in Flux 2021:
  • The number of predefined colors increases from 8 to 30, to give more possibilities to the user to represent the device with more realistic colors.
  • The background of Flux has been updated with a lighter grey, for the consistence with others software of Altair.
  • The default color has been customized for each regions type (only for magnetic applications) and for non mesh coil.

Predefined colors

The predefined colors have been enriched with new, more varied colors. The number of predefined colors is now 36, against 8 previously. This should make it possible to represent models closer to real devices.

Previous list (8 colors) New list (36 colors)
Note:
  • The color Cyan is renamed by Blue (the RGB code doesn't change [0; 0; 255] )
  • The RGB code of the color Turquoise is changed from [0; 255; 255] to [0; 149; 182]

New background color

Setting a lighter background color to be consistent with Altair's other tools, involves a number of adjustments:

  • the default color of the points and lines has changed from white to grey, to distinguish them on the new background color
  • The background color is also changed for the Circuit View. The color of components are also changed from white to grey to distinguish them on the new background color.
  • The background of all context are also changed like the modeler, the sketcher, the import export context ...
Legacy background color New Background color

Default color by region type

To take advantage of the new available colors, the default color at the creation of region has been customized according to the type of region. Thus the Color field in the Appearance tab is now an optional field, which is empty by default.



The user can :

  • choose the wished color
  • or, let the field empty. A color has been automatically assigned after the creation according to the region type. Here a short list of main default color implemented according to the region type:
    • Turquoise: Air or vacuum region
    • Grey_steel: Magnetic non conducting region
    • Orange: Coil conductor region
    • Brown light: Solid conductor region
    • Orange_corail: Region with current density
    • Grey_anthracite: Laminated magnetic non conducting region
    • White: Inactive region
    • Blue: Boundary condition
    • Green_dark: Thin conduction region
    • Brown: Surface impedance region
    • Purple_dark: Perfect insulator in conducting medium

Note:
  • This work covers only 2D ad 3D magnetic applications for point, line, face and volume regions.
  • In the next version we should do the same work for other applications and for specific entities like the non meshed coil.