After reading Part 1 and Part 2 of The Appearance of Things, I hope you have found it easier to change the appearance of your parts. Now I am going to show you how to tie it all together using Display States. Like Appearance Callouts and the Display Pane, Display States are nothing new but I do not see nearly enough people using them. I see way too many people using configurations to control the display of assemblies when Display States are way better. Creating configurations to hide and show components works fine but it can be slower then using Display States. Changing configurations reloads each component as if it were a new one, Display States doesn’t load components.

What are display States?

Display States allow you to create different appearance schemes in an assembly. You can change the appearance of the components in an assembly using Appearance Callouts and the Display Pane and save a named scheme. I use Display States to quickly switch between views that highlight nested components, or show internal geometry or just to switch from shaded to line views.

How to Add a Display State

In the ConfigurationManager, with nothing selected, right-click and select Add Display State.

With the new display state active, modify the appearance of your components using the Display Pane or Appearance Callouts.

Create as many display states as you like to better suit your design  process.

Naming Display States

As your number of display states grow, you will find it easier if you named each state to a simple word or phrase to describe its contents. As with anything in SolidWorks, there are a number of ways to rename the states:

• Slowly click the name twice
• Press ‘F2′ on your keyboard (My Favorite)
• Right-click and select Properties and enter the description in the subsequent menu.

If you use the last option, you can also choose to enable Hide New Components in the selected display state. This means as you add new components to the assembly they will be automatically hidden, leaving your display state unchanged.

To Link or Not To Link

2008 brought the ability to make all display states available to all configurations or make them unique to each configuration. Previously you were only able to have the display states unique to each configuration. To make all the display states available to all configurations deselect the Link Display States to Configurations option at the bottom of the ConfigurationManager.

Switching Between Display States

Switching between display states is even easier then before. You can do one of the following:

• Double-click a display state to activate it
• Right-click a display state and select Activate Display State
• Right-click the >> that normally shows the Display Pane and select the desired display state
• Right-click in the Display Pane and select Activate Display State and select the desired state.
  

  

• Use the new Display States Toolbar to select the desired display state.

As you can see with Appearance Callouts, the Display Pane and Display States you can quickly and easily change the look of your parts, bodies, features, assemblies and even drawings. None of these tools are new but they are still extremely under used, even by myself, and I hope that they will find there way back into your design process. Please send me your feedback and any questions you may have… I am so lonely

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