Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 19 – Icon Themes

The Home Control Assistant

Adding icons to an existing theme

To add a new icon to a theme is very easy. Create the image files with appropriate names and then

put them into the theme folder.

To have HCA detect the new icons, either restart HCA or press the “Reload All Themes” button on

the HCA Options tab shown above.

Modifying theme icons

To change icons in a theme just edit the bitmap files with your changes.

To have HCA detect the changes, either restart HCA or press the “Reload All Themes” button on

the HCA – Properties Display Pane tab.

Creating a new theme

To add a new theme is also very easy. Follow these steps.

 Create the image files for your theme with the names you want.

 Create a new sub-folder in the Icon Themes folder with the name of the theme you want and

place all your bitmap files in that folder.

 Create a Theme.txt file as described above.

To have HCA detect the changes, either restart HCA or press the “Reload All Themes” button on

the HCA – Properties Display Pane tab.

Important facts about creating icons

When you create your own icons for HCA, there are a few things you will want to remember, both

about creating the icons for use in your HCA design.

 All icons in a theme must be the same size and that size must match what is specified in

theme.txt. If an image file is read that has a smaller or larger size it is forced to that size –

either cropping the bitmap or expanding it.

 If your display contains a DXF floor plan, as the HCA window is resized, the floor plan and

any icons on that floor plan are also scaled. Because of this scaling, you should not draw

icons containing very fine detail or text—these features don’t scale well, and the icons may

not look the way you want them to in some sizes.

 When you select an icon during creation of a device, program, or group, HCA uses the default

theme for the design to supply your choices.

 Not all themes need contain the same set of icons. Because each display may have a different

theme there may be times where an icon is looked for in a theme and not found. When this

happens a substitute icon is used. The design inspector looks for this sort of them and makes

notes on that.

web tip: You can find more information on drawing your own icons on the HCA web site in the

technical notes section