About Color Themes
Color themes can be used to change the look of the COMSOL Desktop and to color selections in the Graphics window for easier identification of different parts of the model geometry. You can access and store color theme files in the following locations:
•
 data/colors (similar to data/colortables; for predefined color themes).
•
 .comsol/v64/colors (for user-defined color themes).
It is recommended to use one of the existing color themes, which are designed to consider clashes between theme colors and selection colors. It is up to you to make sure the colors work well together if you modify an existing color theme or add your own.
The COMSOL Multiphysics software will use the default theme color for any color not read successfully from the color theme file, so you do not need to define all colors. Likewise, if a theme used in a model is not available in the data/colorthemes folder, you visually get the default theme.
The color theme files contain three sections.
•
The first section, Graphics colors, defines all the colors used by selections and contains keys for each color, similar to the preferences file. This section contains the theme colors that can be used for geometry coloring. This section can contain an arbitrary number of colors, which will cycle automatically. The colors are defined using RGB data in the range of 0–255.
•
The second section, Theme colors, defines the selection theme colors.
•
The third section, Graph cycle colors, contains colors for graph plots.
For a user-defined color theme, you can add a section called Palette first in the file, where you can define colors to use in one of the other sections. For example,
% Palette
MyColor=100 120 130
 
% Graphics colors
key=MyColor
The color MyColor, defined under Palette, is then used as the color for a key under Graphics colors.
The names of the theme files will appear in the theme-selection lists in the COMSOL Desktop.
Below you find an example file for a custom color theme with suggested names:
% Graphics colors
 
default_surface=200 200 200
default_line=0 0 0
selected_surface=140 140 242
selected_line=0 0 255
hover_surface=255 120 120 100
hover_line=255, 60, 60, 120
hover_surface_simple=242 140 140
hover_line_simple=255 0 0
hover_selected_surface=190 250 190 100
hover_selected_line=100 250 100 120
hover_selected_surface_simple=140 242 140
hover_selected_line_simple=0 153 0
feature_selection1_surface=250 222 87
feature_selection1_line=188 106 0
feature_selection2_surface=255 148 255
feature_selection2_line=155 58 165
feature_selection3_surface=247 147 30
feature_selection3_line=227 127 10
feature_selection4_surface=140 98 57
feature_selection4_line=120 78 37
 
% Theme colors
 
Red=255 0 0
Green=0 255 0
Blue=0 0 255
Yellow=255 255 0
Cyan=0 255 255
Magenta=255 0 255
Chartreuse=127 255 0
Azure=0 127 255
Rose=255 0 127
Orange=255 127 0
Spring green=0 255 127
Violet=127 0 255
Harlequin=63 255 0
Cerulean=0 63 255
Crimson=255 0 63
Lime=207 255 0
Capri=0 191 255
Cerise=255 0 191
Vermilion=255 63 0
Erin=0 255 63
Ultramarine=63 0 255
Amber=255 191 0
Aquamarine=0 255 191
Purple=191 0 255
 
% Graph cycle colors
 
% Range maxRGB
R1 G1 B1
R2 G2 B2
R3 G3 B3
...
where R1, G1, and B1 are the RGB (red, green, and blue) values for the first color; R2, G2, and B2 are the RGB values for the second color; and so on. The range on the first row of that section is the maximum value for an RGB component (maxRGB is an integer value). That row is optional; it defaults to 255 if not set.
It is possible to skip giving colors a name in the theme section, in which case they will be displayed as Color 1, Color 2, and so on. The syntax of the second section would then be:
255 191 0
0 255 191
191 0 255
...
These names only appear in the Linux and macOS version of the COMSOL Desktop, where the colors are displayed in a list. They do not appear in the Windows version.
The simple suffix in the selection color names means that the color is used for software rendering, as well as for OpenGL when Optimize for is set to Performance on the Graphics page in the Preferences window (and possibly also in some other instances when some OpenGL requirements fail).