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You can find the Display States interface at the bottom of the ConfigurationManager, as shown in Figure 5.22 on the right.

FIGURE 5.22

Controlling appearances with Display States

Removing appearances

Once you have applied appearances to a part, you may want to remove them later. You can think of multiple appearances applied to various overrides within the part as an old chair with many layers of paint. In this case, you can remove those layers of paint one by one until you get down to the base material, which in this case would be the default material.

Look at Figure 5.23. Notice that there is a red X to the right of each entity — face, feature, body, and part — and another one at the bottom. Each red X enables you to remove a layer of paint from this part. This example is hopefully more extreme than what you will normally deal with, where separate colors have been applied to each entity: white to the face, blue to the feature, pink to the body, and gray to the part. You can remove any color applied at any level just by clicking the red X. Clicking the bottom red X removes all of the overrides (all of the face, feature, body, part, and other colors that have been applied) and assigns the default appearance for that part.

FIGURE 5.23

Removing layers of appearances from a part

You can assign the default appearance in a part or assembly template, or reassign it in an existing part. To do this, open the Appearances, Scenes, and Decals tab in the Task Pane, find an appearance that you like, and right-click it. Figure 5.24 shows the menu that appears.

FIGURE 5.24

Assigning a default appearance

To save this appearance to a part template, assign the default appearance in an empty part document with settings that you want to use, set the default appearance, and save the empty part as a part template.

Using decals

Starting in SolidWorks 2011, decals have been moved into SolidWorks Standard (base level SolidWorks) and no longer require rendering software. All decals used in a model are listed in the Decal area of the DisplayManager.

To apply a decal, you can use the Appearances, Scenes, and Decals tab of the Task Pane to access the stock or sample images, or you can right-click in the open area of the Decals DisplayManager and select Add Decal. This brings up the Decals PropertyManager, shown in Figure 5.25.

You can use *.bmp, *.jpg, *.tif, and *.png images as decals in SolidWorks. The images can be mapped onto flat, cylindrical, or spherical surfaces. You can uses masks or images with an alpha channel to create transparent parts of the decal. You can also select a color of the image to set to transparent. Only *.tif and *.png images can use alpha channel transparency.

You can size, position, and rotate the decal on the screen with handles, as shown in Figure 5.26. You can use any of the corner nodes on the image to resize the decal. Dragging anywhere inside the image border moves the decal, and dragging the yellow ball in the center of the image rotates it.

FIGURE 5.25

Working with the Decals PropertyManager

FIGURE 5.26

Sizing and positioning the decal

Using scenes, lights, and cameras

Scenes, lights, and cameras are important for visualization and rendering. Rendering is not covered in this book because PhotoView 360 (the replacement for the now-defunct PhotoWorks 2) is not part of the SolidWorks Standard package. The Scene, Lights, and Cameras DisplayManager is shown in Figure 5.27.

FIGURE 5.27

Using the Scene, Lights, and Cameras DisplayManager

Controlling scenes

In SolidWorks, a scene is composed of three things: a background, which may be an image, a gradient, or a color; a floor, on which shadows and reflections are cast; and an environment, which is a wraparound 3D image (*.hdr or *.hdri — high dynamic range images) that provides light to the model in a rendering and will reflect on the model if the model is a highly reflective material. If the environment is hidden, you only see the background. You can also hide the floor so there are no