### Understanding Feature Colors

In some charts and tabs feature variables will appear as color-coded bordered items to reflect the tolerance zone within which each item falls (or out of tolerance items).

Note: Currently, the colors used in Datapage+ are completely independent of the dimension color scheme used in PC-DMIS.

Sample Colors in the Feature Monitor Tab | The colors used correspond to the color-coded tolerance zones specified in the Dimension Color dialog box, accessible from the Tools | Dimension Color menu item. Your colors may be different than those displayed in the screen captures in this documentation.

Dimension Color dialog box

To see what the colors represent, select the drop down list in this dialog box.

By default, there is a single tolerance zone, bounded by negative and positive out of tolerance zones:

- Out of 100% of Negative Tolerance.

- 0-100% of tolerance.

- Out of 100% of Positive Tolerance.

For example, in this image the green zone is the single tolerances zone:

Sample drop down list with a single (green color) tolerance zone

The current colors and tolerance zones will also appear in a colored bar that exists on some reports. This is called a "color map".

Sample Color Map with four tolerance zones

For information on the color map see, "Moving and Sizing the Color Map".

Changing the Tolerance Zones

In the Number of Tolerance Zones box, you can add additional zones. Type the number of zones and Datapage+ will divide up the in-tolerance percentage of 100 among those zones. So, if you changed the zone to 4, there would be four zones of 25% each: 0-25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, and 75-100%.

Sample drop down with four tolerance zones

The On tolerance check box changes "Out of 100% of Negative Tolerance" to "On 100% Tolerance".

Selecting a New Color

The Dimension Color dialog box provides a number of ways to define the color for the currently selected tolerance. The easiest way to choose a new color for the currently selected tolerance zone is to simply click on the desired hue from the grid of available colors.

If you want a color or hue that is not available on the grid, hover your mouse over the grid and click the flip button when it appears. The grid flips over to display a Color Picker and Color Slider. You can then use the Color Picker after using the Color Slider to get the base color. Additional boxes allow you to specify numerically an exact color out of the many possible combinations.

The following graphic describes these areas of the dialog box:

1. Color Picker. This area shows all the gradations or hues from black to white within the selected base color. To choose your color, simply click on the hue you want within the Color Picker. It will appear in the Selected Color box.

2. Color Slider. This chooses a base color.

3. Selected Color. This area shows the currently selected color that will be used. It also contains a read-only field displaying the RGB values as hexadecimal number with the # prefix to define the color. 0 to 255 is translated as 00 to FF in hexadecimal.

4. s RGB Boxes. These (R)ed, (G)reen (B)lue boxes allow you to mix any color by typing in the intensity of the R, G, or B color value by using numbers between 0 and 255 for each box. (A)lpha controls the transparency of the pixels when items using this color are overlaid on top of other colors: 0 is completely invisible. 255 is completely opaque.

Show Colors in Two Directions

The Show Colors in Two Directions check box determines whether or not your tolerance zones for the current part program displays the same color range in two directions, one heading towards the Positive Out of Tolerance range and the other heading towards the Negative Out of Tolerance range. This effectively expands the lower dimension color range to –Tol instead of zero. You can then define the negative dimension colors and positive dimension colors separately.

Example of Four Tolerance Zones Showing Colors in Two Directions with Custom Colors

Buttons

Default - Sets the default color to the current selection and tolerance zone scheme for other parts.

Save - Saves the current color and tolerance zone scheme so that you can use them again in subsequent uses of the software.

OK - Utilizes the currently selected color scheme for the current session. If you log out and log back in, the previous colors will be used unless you click Save.