Appearance in Assemblies

By default, components that you add to an assembly are displayed using the appearance properties (such as color and transparency) specified in the original part document. This is true for all shaded and wireframe display modes. You can override the part appearance for selected instances, or use the default appearance for the assembly. You can apply the changes to the part document or to the component in the assembly (leaving the part document unchanged).

Changing the Appearance Properties of Component Instances

To change the appearance properties of selected component instances:

  1. Do one of the following:
    • In the Display Pane, click in the Appearances column for the component and select Appearance.
    • Select a component in the FeatureManager design tree or in the graphics area and click Edit > Appearance > Appearance. To select multiple components, hold Ctrl as you select.
  2. Make selections in the Appearances PropertyManager.
    By default, appearance changes are applied at the component level (that is, only in the assembly document). In the Appearances PropertyManager, under Selected Geometry, you can specify to apply the changes in the part document.
  3. Click .
    The appearance properties of the selected instances change.
    If you apply an appearance change to the top-level assembly, the new appearance is applied to all components in the assembly. Appearance changes you apply to individual components are overridden by the top-level appearance change. For example, if you set the color of the top-level assembly to blue, the entire assembly becomes blue, regardless of changes you have applied to individual components.

    To remove an appearance from the top-level assembly: In the Display Pane, click in the Appearances column for the top-level assembly, click Appearance, and click Remove Appearance.

Removing All Appearances

You can remove all appearances from all models inside an assembly or subassembly.

To remove all appearances:

  1. In the FeatureManager design tree, right-click the assembly containing appearances to remove and click Appearances .
  2. Click Remove all appearances from components in assembly-name .
    The appearances are removed.

    Assembly with appearances

    Appearances removed

Toggling the Wireframe Display Color of Components

To toggle the wireframe display color of components:

Click View > Display > Use Component Color in HLR/HLV.
  • When this menu item is selected, assembly components appear in the wireframe/HLR color of the component.
  • When this menu item is cleared, assembly components appear in the wireframe/HLR color of the assembly.

Updating Assembly Graphics

You can set an option to update model graphics data for components when you save assemblies, to prevent display list data from becoming out-of-date.

To update assembly graphics:

  1. Click Options (Standard toolbar) or Tools > Options.
  2. On the System Options tab, click Assemblies and select Update model graphics when saving files.
  3. Click OK.

Parallel Tessellation When Regenerating Assembly Graphics

The SOLIDWORKS software uses multicore CPU technology to reduce the time it takes to regenerate the graphics display of large assemblies.

Instead of processing components individually, all of the bodies of every component that need to be retessellated are gathered together, allowing parallel tessellation of longer lists of bodies.

Some examples of places where this processing method improves performance are:

  • Opening files when out of date components must be updated
  • Regenerating assembly features when multiple components are affected
  • Creating sectioned bodies
  • Patterning multiple components

For best performance, click Tools > Options > Document Properties > Image Quality. Under Shaded and draft quality HLR/HLV resolution, select Apply to all referenced part documents.

Only components with the same image quality can be processed together.