Modifying Fusion 360 Tool Library Interface

If you’re an avid Fusion CAM user you know about the whole debacle with the new tool library — a good concept that was rolled out too soon. I’ll start by saying, you can still (for now) disable the new tool library by going to:

Preferences > Preview Features > Uncheck “Tool Library”.

With that said, there are some major UI issues with the tool library. Autodesk is really proud of their “Artifakt” font, but unfortunately it really just isn’t super readable for dense data like a tool library. I’m hoping they revert back, but I really doubt it.

How to Improve Readability

These modifications were based on my own personal preferences. You can also adjust padding, typeface, or just about anything else with some basic CSS

First off — here’s a disclaimer: **** NO WARRANTY **** Do this at your own risk. I claim no liability for any of this. This is a very quick and dirty way to do all of this. I haven’t really debugged it, and it mainly just works for the tool library screen, doesn’t help a whole lot in the “edit tool” dialogue. Hopefully I can figure out how to apply the same changes there once I do a little more digging.

Also, I’m pretty sure all these changes will get wiped out every time Fusion auto-updates.

Please note a lot of this is not “best practices” for CSS. Either way, it makes the tool library readable, and gives you the ability to customize to your liking.

1) Locate the CSS file

C:\Users\[YOUR USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Autodesk\webdeploy\production\[MOST RECENT FOLDER, LONG ALPHANUMERIC NAME]\Applications\CAM360\tool-library\static\css

The folder was “a93b41817d8af77c4f46fcf4f87b0f003298f7f0”, for me in June 2020, but it will most likely be different for you.

RECOMMENDED STEP: Make a backup of the contents of this folder, either by copying to a safe place on your computer or by saving the files as [FILENAME].css.bak

2) De-Minify

There will be a few CSS files, and a few map files. Find the CSS file that references the “Artifakt” font in the first several lines. The files are minified, so you will have to un-minify them. Easiest way to do this is to just copy the code into this site, then paste the results back into the file.

https://unminify.com/

3) Remove References to Artifakt Font

Comment out lines 1–26 (could be different for you) which reference the artifakt font. Place /* at the first line, and */ at the last line you want to comment out.

4) Change the Font

To change the font to 300 weight sans-serif, add the following code:

/* Modify Global Font */
* {
   font-family:sans-serif; !important
   letter-spacing:.03rem; !important
   -webkit-font-smoothing: none;
   font-weight:300;
}

5) Add Gridlines

To add gridlines, add the following code:

/* Add Gridlines */
.MatrixTable__row {
   border:1px solid #aaa;
}

6) Optional Last Step

It’s possible this removes a few more instances of the Artifakt font, which will fall back to Sans Serif by default.

Change the name of the directory …/CAM360/tool-library/fonts/ArtifaktElement to something like “ArtifaktElementBackup”. This should effectively hide the font from the tool library code.