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Editing or creating custom materials

Understanding appearances

Appearances are made up of a combination of color, illumination properties, a surface finish image, and image mapping settings. You can control all these options in the Advanced interface of the Appearances PropertyManager, as shown in Figure 5.19. To access this interface, click the Appearance icon in the Heads Up View toolbar, and click the Advanced button at the top of the PropertyManager.

FIGURE 5.19

Controlling the components of appearance

You can adjust the default appearances that install with SolidWorks when you apply them to your models. For example, you can apply a shiny, reflective appearance such as Stainless Steel, but then adjust its color to blue or red. You could apply a cast iron appearance and then increase the roughness. You might apply a brushed aluminum appearance, and change the direction of the brush lines. You could apply a reflective glass appearance, then reduce the reflectivity and increase the transparency. You might apply a knurled steel appearance to a cylindrical part, and adjust the mapping so that the knurled image does not smear improperly across a face. Figure 5.20 shows the contents of the Color/Image, Mapping, Illumination, and Surface Finish tabs of the Appearances PropertyManager, where you can adjust all of these settings and more.

FIGURE 5.20

Adjusting the display properties in the Appearances PropertyManager

Understanding overrides

Keeping track of colors and appearances in SolidWorks can be difficult. The scheme and terminology seem to change with every release, and SolidWorks 2011 is no exception in this regard. For example, many users have difficulty understanding when one color overrides another color, and how to remove layers of applied colors or appearances. The functionality called Overrides existed in previous versions, but is now more prominent in 2011.

Here is the hierarchy that SolidWorks uses when applying colors (appearances):

• Default

• Part

• Body

• Feature

• Face

• Component

• Assembly

You should read this list with the words “…is overridden by…” between the items. So the default appearance is overridden by anything else, and an appearance that you apply to the assembly overrides everything else. You can also think of this list as being sorted from the weakest to the strongest.

In Figure 5.14, the DisplayManager shows the colors and appearances listed by history, which refers to the order in which they were added to the model. Figure 5.21 shows the appearances sorted by hierarchy, using the order established by Overrides. The Sort Order drop-down list allows you to select from History, Hierarchy, and Alphabetical sorting.

FIGURE 5.21

Sorting appearances and colors by hierarchy

There is no simple way of describing the entire appearances method. It is unnecessarily complex and does not always work as described. You may find times where a face clearly has an altered appearance, but SolidWorks says it does not and moreover won't allow you to remove or change the appearance.

Using appearances with Display States

Display States are covered in more detail later in this chapter. You will also need to understand configurations (see Chapter 11) to completely grasp the use of appearances with Display States. You can assign appearances to apply to all Display States or just to the current Display State. Display States in turn can be linked or unlinked to configurations, and some display properties such as color can be controlled by configurations. The control of appearances and colors for Display States and configurations is convoluted at best. This is a warning that mixing changes to these four items can result in colors that you can either not remove or not apply. It is difficult to say how much of this is due to bugs and how much is due to convoluted logic and too many sources of control. You can control the setting for which Display States an appearance change will apply to. You do this in the Display States panel at the very bottom of the Appearances PropertyManager,