The H-Factor

AutoCAD 2015 introduced a Dark Color theme to add to what is now called a Light theme. In all, there are four (or six!) basic configurations. Dark and Light, regular and large buttons. These are accessed via the OPTIONS command and found on the Display tab of that command.

The default is the dark theme with regular buttons, which many find hard to read. Many also find the large buttons to help considerably, or choose the Light theme with either large buttons or not. This is what the four can look like:

Light Theme / Large Buttons

Light Theme / Regular Buttons

Dark Theme / Large Buttons

Dark Theme / Regular Buttons

Furthermore, AutoCAD 2020 changed the Dark theme to be dark blue instead of the dark grey of earlier versions, in acknowledgement of the difficulty of seeing the button pictures clearly

Dark Theme 2020 / Large Buttons

Dark Theme 2020 / Regular Buttons

The regular buttons are still too small in my opinion, but the large dark looks better. A future update will make our button images transparent so they present better – right now they have a shadow around them of the dark grey color.

Also notice the Ribbon buttons do not get larger by selecting Large. Will they change that in the future? Who knows…