Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

Please add color back to AC20 user interface.

Anonymous
Not applicable
I think the idea that "ARCHICAD’s new interface provides cleaner workspace free of visual noise" is fine in itself, but pre-AC20 interface (albeit, dated) is much easier to read due to extra level of clarity brought by the color.

AC20 is so uniform in color that it takes me a few seconds just to get my bearings every time I need to find something on a Project Map (pre-AC20 schemes used to have colored icons). With AC20's new colorless interface Project Map is just an indistinguishable grey glow that is hard to navigate.

View Map is a bit better due to icons being blue, not grey, so it seems color does help, but Layout Book is, again, a grey mess.

The ease of navigation and usability goes on, but I think interface color needs to be brought back.

Think of this as a difference between a grayscale and color floor plan drawing.

Color drawing can communicate a lot of information quickly and clearly, on the other hand, if you convert that same drawing to greyscale — lots of graphical information gets instantly lost to a viewer.

UI, as varied as ARCHICAD's, is not unlike that.
18 REPLIES 18
Gus
Newcomer
ArchiCAD with Themes?!

It took a few days, but I figured out how all the new icons look, and I don't miss the old interface at all anymore. I do have 20/20 eyesight and relatively young eyes. I can see how a lack of contrasting color could be a problem as one's eyes get worse over time. It's a fact that the ability to view contrast degenerates over time. Since some like the current color scheme (and hopefully the ability to customize colors in the future), and some do not like the new color scheme, why not have "themes" like so many other software use? People could create color Themes and share them like they do with Work Environments, and Templates. I personally wish most that we could color our folders. With so many folders of views it would really be great if my most used ones could be a different color than the rest.
www.michaelgustavson.com Architect NY WI IL
Madison WI
Archicad21 MEP EcoDesSTAR Win10-64-bit
EliteBook8570W Corei7-3630QM@2.40GHz
QuadroK2000m RAM32 (2)250GBSSDs
4 Monitors Internet:4Up60Down
Anonymous
Not applicable
WE WANT BLACK!!
Anonymous
Not applicable
I have started a new project in AC20... I regret that already!
1. I spent at moment ~ 3x longer time than I usually do, but didnt finish it yet
2. After 8 hours of work my eyes are red and "sandy"
3. As I spent a lot of time and didnt get work finished, I feel very frustrated.
4. I became very irritated, depressed. Every day I imagine how I hammer nails into UI developers head, of course nail head in front.

So I am spending my nerves, losing money and time just because of one id... bad person.

GS, please, DO SOMETHING!
Da3dalus
Enthusiast
I'm with @Vasil4y92... Bring back color and give us a BLACK background option! I've actually been turning on the Invert in the Mac Accessibility Control Panel, and as long as I'm working on design, not photos, it's very soothing.

Bluebeam, Pixelmator, and Adobe (dark Gray) really know what they are doing! Even Apple's creativity apps (Garageband, iMovie, Final Cut, Logic, and optionally Photos) use the dark gray, and color icons really POP.

Think it through... you can give certain color ranges a purpose, such as red representative of a warning, while green means something is active (we do still have this in Teamwork Reserved Indicators).

We're getting used to it, but there's still a lot of grumbling out here.
InvertAC.jpg
Chuck Kottka
Orcutt Winslow
Phoenix, Arizona, USA

ArchiCAD 25 (since 4.5)
Macbook Pro 15" Touchbar OSX 10.15 Core i7 2.9GHz/16GB RAM/Radeon Pro560 4GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
Well - after several months using AC20 I can confirm that the new interface is awful! The lack of colour is unforgivable in this type of complex application. Everything takes longer because the eye cannot immediately locate the relevant icon. I am really disappointed and have started new projects on AC19 because it is simply more efficient use of time.
Takis
Expert
I agree for getting the color back.

Takis.
rjwilden
Booster
Agree: When I go back to a project in V19 it instantley becomes apparent that colour is better.
Richard Wilden Design. Ltd
Dunedin, New Zealand.
Imac 27" i9 3.6GHz; 32GB Ram Mac OS 11.3
Archicad V23:V24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Why and how did this happend?
Archicad is a professional tool not a modern hobby device, and making ALL icons colorless was not very thoughtful of you.
Color is essential for brain-eye reaction.
Instead: create at least two UI color schemes and input color to UI, PLEASE!!!
Anonymous
Not applicable
We have active projects in versions 16, 19 and 21 and it's evident colour helps a great deal after jumping between files. Hoping GS have added some colour to the v23 UI!!