The two methods used of displaying these textures is either “ Bump mapping” or “ Displacement mapping”, as seen below. Note this is just an appearance, the geometry of the part does not necessarily change. If the required texture is not present amongst the drop down list, you can add your own when selecting “ From file” amongst this list. By hovering over the commands, the user is presented with a visual illustration of what the command does. In order to find out what each of the commands does, by toggling on “ Dynamic help” as seen below in Image 6. For example I have applied the “Treadplate 2” texture to the face of some geometry and it appears as follows On the surface finish tab, there are a variety of choices, each of which presents the user with a completely different texture on the appearance. This tab consists of a number of slider bars enabling the user to alter the image in a variety of ways i.e. This enables the user to change the path for the texture file, as seen in Image 4, and also enables two additional tabs “ Illumination” and “ Surface finish”. In order to manipulate the appearance and generate a new separate appearance, the advanced button needs to be selected, as shown in Image 3. To achieve this, right-click on the appearance in the Appearance manager-> edit appearance. These appearances can then be dragged and dropped onto the model and specifying the level that you want it applied to face, feature, body, part/assembly.Īlternatively, instead of using an image file of your choice, an existing appearance can be manipulated in order to achieve the desired result. This should then populate the bottom half of the task pane with the containing image files, see Image 2 below. “ Documents” and select the “ Add file location” button as shown below in Image 1, then select the folder that the files are in. In order to use these images, all you have to do is save them in a location of your choice i.e. Which is especially useful if the user wants to see their product within its natural environment. Any image can be used, even a photo taken by the user. There are over 10 different file types that are recognized as image files within SOLIDWORKS and are therefore usable as custom appearances. Additional ‘out-of-the-box’ appearances can be added or created, however. A vast library of appearances and textures are included in every SOLIDWORKS install.

Solidworks mesh appearance