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In This Chapter

Changing visual properties by using display states

Using assembly configurations to manage large assemblies

Working with assembly configurations tutorial

Assembly configurations enable you to control many things, including part configurations, suppression, visibility, color, and assembly feature sizes. They also enable you to control assembly layout sketch dimensions, mate values, suppression states, and several other items. In this chapter, you learn about related topics such as design tables, SpeedPak, derived configurations, and display states.

Display states are a better performance alternative than configurations for controlling visibility and displaying part styles in assemblies. Display state options are discussed at length in this chapter.

Using Display States

Display states enable you to change visual properties more quickly than configurations. Configurations save a lot of extra data if all you need to do is hide or show parts. However, they can be slow to change from one configuration to another, whereas you can change between display states almost instantaneously.

Assembly display states can also control part display states, and different instances of a part in an assembly can use different display states.

Although display states can be used in both parts and assemblies, they have the most impact on assembly work, which is why they have been included in this book instead of SolidWorks 2011 Parts Bible (Wiley, 2011).

Controlling display states and configurations

Display states can be either independent of configurations or linked to them, depending on your settings. To control the display, you can use the Display Pane that pops out when you click the double-arrow icon in the upper-right corner of the FeatureManager. Figure 8.1 shows the Display Pane in action, along with an assembly showing parts in different display states.

FIGURE 8.1

The Display Pane and an assembly with parts in different display states

The column symbols for the Display Pane are as follows:

• Hide or show state of the part

• Display Mode options for each component:

Appearances

Transparency

Default Display

Component/Part Color

Note

The difference between a component and a part in SolidWorks assemblies is that a component is a generic way of identifying any top-level item in an assembly, and may be a single part or a subassembly. The word component always refers to a specific instance of the part within the assembly. In the case shown in Figure 8.1, the gripper jaw part is used twice; this creates two instances of the gripper jaw. One instance has its component color set to a custom color, and the other instance uses the part color. (The component color is also referred to as an override of the part color.) The part color is what you see when you open the part in its own window. The component color is only set in the assembly, and you can only see it in that particular assembly; it never affects how the part displays in any other assembly in which the part is shown.

When there is a difference between the part and component display properties (in other words, when an override exists), the component property appears as the upper-left triangle in the Appearance column of the Display Pane, and the part property appears as the lower-right triangle. You can only see these triangles in the Appearance column of the Display Pane.

Appearance overrides are summarized here, showing the lowest priority at the top:

• Part

• Body

• Feature

• Face

• Component

• Assembly

If you override the appearance or display mode for a component in a subassembly, and the upper-left triangle appears in the Display Pane, you can remove the override through the left mouse button (LMB) or the right mouse button (RMB) menu. Figure 8.2 shows the LMB menu from a component of a subassembly with overrides.

FIGURE 8.2

You can remove overrides in the assembly Display Pane.

When you select Clear Override, SolidWorks clears any overrides for the currently selected