Mystery Appearance in 1 Configuration

[SPerman]

All of a sudden my part turned black in one configuration. There is no appearance applied, so it can't be deleted. Being black makes it impossible to see what I am doing. I have restarted solidworks, but the problem returned.

Please see this GIF. Does anyone know how to make this go away?

[SPerman]

I created a new configuration and it was the normal color.

[Glenn Schroeder]

I hate to ask, because I know you aren't a rookie at using SW, but have you turned off the option shown near the top at https://www.cadforum.net/viewtopic.php? ... p=883#p883?

[SPerman]

Yes. That option has always caused me more problems than it has solved.

I guess it was just one of those solidworks things.

[HDS]

2019 and 2020 had lots of bugs in configurations, display states and appearances. They randomly change, get lost and never stay fixed. I never found a work around. can not say if they got fixed in 2021.

[ryan-feeley]

2019 and 2020 had lots of bugs in configurations, display states and appearances. They randomly change, get lost and never stay fixed. I never found a work around. can not say if they got fixed in 2021.

I've found that display states work pretty well in 2019 and 2020, with the exception of a few quirks. Based on my experimentation, a "display state" is a bit of a two headed beast. One head knows how to show a 3D model. Under the hood it is likely an OpenGL display list. The other head controls visibility of sketches and planes, which are somehow added to the graphics view separately.

Part files managed these two heads just fine. Assemblies have some quirks. Effectively they access and manipulate one head of a component's display state (the 3D model display) according to your selected display state, but for plane/sketch visibility, they use/edit values from the display-state that the part was "last saved" in.

So if you "configure component" and select a part's display state, the body appearances will be per the selected display state, but you won't get the plane/sketch visibility of that display state -- those come from the last-saved values. Similarly if you edit visibility of these within an assembly, the edits don't apply to the selected component display state in the assembly. They apply to the display state active in the part model.

Further, an assembly allows you to override body appearances (effectively replacing one head of the component's display state) and storing the customization in the assembly file. But they don't allow you to override plane/sketch visibility. This always comes from the display state active when the part was last saved.

Appearances are a bit messier. They don't track well during a model development. Operations like mirror, pattern, split, splitline, etc turn them into a mess. It is even worse if you are apply materials to specific bodies in a multi-body part. CTRL+Q helps a little, as does just deleting all display states and starting over with applying appearances.

[Tera]

All of a sudden my part turned black in one configuration. There is no appearance applied, so it can't be deleted. Being black makes it impossible to see what I am doing. I have restarted solidworks, but the problem returned.

Please see this GIF. Does anyone know how to make this go away?

Appearance.gif

I had the same problem a while back. In my case, it was 4 components in an assembly.
I had to right click each component, select Component Display and then Select Shaded With Edges.

[SPerman]

This bug is somehow related to simulation. I've had it happen a couple of times now. Something in the process of creating and running a stress analysis causes this to happen. The only way to get it to go away is to delete the simulation study.