setting colors & appearances to parts

In 2000i2, I had no trouble setting colors & appearances to individual parts, or to components within assemblies. Nor was there a problem setting colors to individual surfaces on parts.



With 2001, however, I haven't figured out how to set colors to parts (and surfaces) because the Colors & Appearances option under the View menu doesn't engage.



The only time I'm able to set colors is after I've created and saved an assembly. Even then, I can only set colors to assembly components, and not to individual surfaces.



It makes distinguishing components difficult when they are all colored white by default.



Can anyone help?

check the save_model_display setting in the config.pro

I'm having a little more success setting colors to parts. The Colors & Appearances menu engages now. However, there are still some funny things occurring.



The first occurs when I open ProE first thing to retrieve a part or assembly. The datum colors resort back to their initial state (i.e. black planes, black text, black axes, etc), even though I've set them to default and saved a copy to my system_colors file. So I'm constantly having to reset this each time I open ProE.



My second problem is when I create assemblies. Let's say I'm putting together a red bolt and a blue hex nut. The blue hex nut has a hole in its middle which I've previously assigned a white shaded color. When I assemble the nut to the bolt, I notice the nut is all blue (its hole feature color is gone).