weird color problem

[RipV]

I noticed last Friday that my color swatch is gone. It is still gone today.
On a solid part model I rightclick on the model name in the tree/select the appearances ball/select the color square/ the appearances bar opens but the color swatch is missing. The window is there but the background is all grey rather than the multiple color/shade selections. The window right under is is there & I can select colors there but can get no two alike by random picking.

What could have caused this? I figured once I shut the system down & rebooted it would be ok but not the case.

Any Ideas/ surely there is not a setting to disabe this.
Thanks,
Ken

 

[RipV]

forgot to mention:
SW 2009/SP3.0

Ken

 

[RipV]

Here is a screenshot:

 

[SincoTC]

Immediately above the now "Grey" Swatch box is a dropdown list box, I can't see from your image what it says, but if you open the list and select "Standard", you should get what you want back, now save the file to keep this swatch for next time.

It is possible to arrive at this situation by "accidentally" creating an empty "Custom Swatch". Someone may have clicked on the icon to the left of this list box, and then saved the "Swatch" name offered in the pop-up dialog, this will give you a blank grey area with a "Selected color" rectangle, further pressing of the two other buttons below the "Create New Swatch" button, can clear this selection rectangle to leave a plain blank swatch as you describe and if the part file is then saved, it will open like this next time.

Hope this helps.

Trevor Clarke. (R & D) Scientific Instruments.Somerset. UK

SW2009x64 SP4.1 Intel Core i7 2.94Ghz, 12Gb Ram, NVIDIA Quadro FX3700 Driver: 6.14.11.9100
SW2009x64 SP4.1 Intel Core 2 Duo 3.17Ghz, 8Gb Ram NVIDIA Quadro FX3700 Driver: 6.14.11.9100

 

[RipV]

thanks for the input....but unfortunately it didn't work.

The dropdown menu is on "standard" & always has been. If I pick another selection it is also grey, with the exception if I pick "shiny" there is (1) lone green square in the upper left corner only. No one uses this station except me & I'm fairly certain that I haven't cleared the box & saved over the original with same name...but things do happen.

I might try to find that "standard" file & if I can I could copy from one of my co-workers stations?

Ken

 

[SincoTC]

They're normally installed in C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english\color swatches

When in SolidWorks, you might also want to check Tools>Options>System Options>File Locations and make sure that "Color Swatches" is pointing to this folder.

 

[RipV]

I just copied the (4) colorswatch files from my neighbors station & replaced mine. It WORKED!! all is well again.

I experience frequent solidworks crashes to the point its just an annoying part of my workday. I may have actually been changing the color of a prt file when it crashed & perhaps corrupted the files?? then didn't notice till an attempted color change later.

I did close SW & reopen to confirm it still works. I will now delete the "non-working" files which I put on my desktop just in case.

Ken

 

[RipV]

just saw your post about file locations... I'd never thought of that but I did just now check & it is pointing to the correct folder.

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

 

[007bondy]

ripv
Reading your post you talked about regular crashes 4 or 5 a day , i went through this same thing with 2004-5 and it turned out that the power supply wasn't grunty enough and as a consequense(???)crash also check that your cpu and or gpu aren't overheating (eg clogged ventilation in your comp)
this also was contributing to down time .these simple things are often overlooked
just my 0.2c worth
;-)cheers