I have an assembly model that consists of one component; the component is our blank casting.  This blank casting part model has been given a part level appearance of “cast aluminum”.  This part model has been inserted into our assembly model to add the machined features.  Each of these features has been given a feature level appearance of “polished aluminum” mainly to give a visual indication of “as-cast” and “machined” surfaces.

This assembly model has two configurations in it.  One called casting which only shows the blank casting part file.  The other is called machining; this one has the blank casting model as well as the polished aluminum appearance machining features.

When we first open the machined assembly file, everything looks good (see screen capture1).  The “as-cast” surfaces have a distinctly different appearance than the machined surfaces.  All good.

If I switch configurations, the first time everything is still good.  It does not seem to matter which configuration the assembly was last saved in.  Ex: if I save the assembly model in the “machining” configuration, I can open it and the as-cast surfaces are dark grey and the machined surfaces are lighter gray.  If I change to the “casting” configuration the machining features are all suppressed and the entire part is the darker gray as-cast appearance as expected and vice versa (see screen capture2).

However, (and this is where the problem starts) this only works for the first configuration change.  After that the entire model changes to what appears to be the “polished aluminum” (lighter grey) appearance (see screen capture3).  And it stays that way until you close and reopen the assembly file.

Side note:

We did install SP5.0 for 2013 last night.  I would not expect that to affect the video driver selection but I guess it is possible.  However I did open a similar part that was modeled in the past and it seem to function properly appearance-wise when changing configurations.

I have attached the model files also if anybody cares to take a look.

Thanks for any help,

David (wanna make the right appearance) Hurayt