Is it me or with 2009 the parts seem to be dark. Is there a way to turn up the brightness of all parts and assemblies all the time? I find that I have to turn up the ambient light to full to see the parts clearly. This is not what I want to do for every part. Any ideas
I'm not seeing the same as you and it might have some to do with the video card. My brightest seems to be light cards but even at that that is not enough.
To get what you want all the time you will need to tweak your Part and Assembly templates.
A good start as Adrian suggested is to change your scene to plain white and to take out the darker side of the part you will need to add another light shining up to the underside. Save this as your new template and all new parts will be as you want them to be.