How to have line colors for parts show up

[pairofjacks]

While reviewing an assembly, I've never been able to see the colors of my parts (in wireframe) in an assembly like I used to in simple 2D autocad. It was always helpful to view top/side/bottom views to determine clearances, etc. Solidworks makes this very, very, very hard. After an hour or two of futzing with a simple assembly model with three parts (a red square, a blue disk, and a purple triangle), I've stumbled on some observations that may help people. Like many answers, it also brings up more questions...


The following planets had to align for me to see colors in the assembly shown below:

1. Menu item: View/Display/(depressed or "checked") Draft Quality HLR

2. Menu item: View/Display/(checked) Use Component Color in HLR/HLV

3. Change the color of the part you want to see. Appearances - change the component level to a color. This is the color you will see in the assembly. The purple triangle had a purple

4. Control-Q (this rebuild and refreshes the display).



Questions;


1. You'd think the default would be that the part color (document level color) would automatically show up as the wireframe color in an assembly. When I inserted the purple triangle into the assembly, the wireframe was the default (black) color. It should have been purple. (Maybe there's some setting somewhere that I could set?). To make the triangle lines purple (like the document level color), I had to set the color to purple (choose Component Level in the pop-up).

2. Draft Quality HLR is sometimes greyed out in my assemblies (so I can't align the planets). How do I regain control of this button? In particular, I have an assembly with several assemblies that cannot show component colors (because the Draft Quality HLR is greyed out)

3. Everything I've been discussing so far is with the display in wireframe. When I select HLR or HLV, I get the same behaviour; "unchecking" either of the view/display items mentioned above, the lines become black. When both items are "checked", only the component colors show. You'd think that by unchecking the "Use Component Color" that you'd see the underlying document level color. I never could get the document level color to show regardless of what I did.





View attachment 5903

 

[Raoul-RW]

1) After applying the desired color/appearance within the Part-file, go to Tools > Options > Document Properties > Colors. Select the words Wireframe/HLR/Shading and select the box'Apply same color to wireframe, HLRand shaded'. You will see the colored box at the right side of this menu changing into the earlier chosen color.

Now, you will see that the wireframe has the same color as in shaded mode. It is important to implement these setting into the part-files and NOT into the assembly.


2 and 3) The main assembly needs to be in wireframe-mode in order to make the color for every seperate parts within subassemblieswireframe to work. If the assembly is in shaded mode and the parts/subassemblies in wireframe mode, the whole wireframe will be displayed as one single color again.


Let me know if you have further questions

 

[pairofjacks]

Thanks! That was just too simple... I'm going to change my part template so this is my default.