SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part III: Working with Assemblies

When you select Clear Override, SolidWorks clears any overrides for the currently selected subas-

sembly component. Clear All Top Level Overrides clears all overrides in all subassemblies in the

entire top-level assembly. There is no intermediate option to clear all top-level overrides for a par-

ticular subassembly; if you want to distinguish between overrides at that level, you need to clear

several individual overrides. The options to remove overrides do not affect top-level components.

The active Display State appears in angle brackets after the configuration name and the filename at

the top of the FeatureManager, as shown in the image on the left in Figure 14.3. Display States are

created and managed in the ConfigurationManager, in a panel at the bottom of the Configuration-

Manager, as shown in the image on the right in Figure 14.3. To create a new Display State, simply

right-click in the Display Pane and choose Add Display State. It seems a little counterintuitive that

in the place where you create Display States, you cannot see the list of Display States.

FIGURE 14.3

Display States shown in the FeatureManager and the ConfigurationManager

Performance
Display States offer a huge performance gain over configurations when used to control display of parts. The rea-
son for this is that SolidWorks saves some model information for each configuration. When a configuration is cre-
ated only for the purpose of hiding or coloring a part, this takes up a lot of additional file space and CPU (central
processing unit) time. Display States change much faster than configurations — almost instantaneously — and
they add very little space when you use them. n