How to get a part to have a faded portion

Hi Bob,

to my knowledge there is no out of the box function in SW to give you the output you're after.  You could invest in Composer if you plan on doing this sort of thing a lot, it appears to do what you're after SOLIDWORKS Composer.

Or you can Photoshop it.

EDIT:

I wouldn't be surprised if that image they use on that website to sell composer is actually doctored elsewhere.

The way I would do it is a multiple step process for every wire..  Go to Tools/System Options/Color and change your screen color to Gradient and take a snap shot and save it. Do the same for both colors, then after your part is completed, open File Explorer and drag the saved jpg on to the feature and edit the appearance and the mapping..

Or... Open any draw program or maybe a Microsoft program and change the Gradient to closer match what you need.

edited - Peter Brinkhuis You can make a difference changing or adding lighting in SW

I though you could maybe get this effect by playing with the lights in SolidWorks, but I didn't even come close.

My best guess would be to make two screenshots of the extremes, overlay them in an image editing tool and add a gradient that changes the transparency. My tool of choice (Paint.net) can't do this however.

Anyhow, that went downhill.

What is the level of outcome you are after? If your after a high level of finish, I'd setup a camera to the view you require. I'd then render it out full colour, I'd then render it out as contours. I'd overlay them in photoshop (or GIMP) and add transparency where wanted.

The beauty of using a camera is you can hide parts and the view will remain exactly the same, as where with a perspective view it will be altered depending on the bounding area of the visible parts. Therefore you could render out individual parts and overlay them if you really wanted.