Assemblies

You reference a display state in a drawing view. A component in that display state is hidden. You right-click the view, go to Properties > Hide/Show Components, and try to show the component. Nothing happens. You try Show Component from the FeatureManager. Still nothing. The drawing view ignores you. This is by design, and it got stricter in SolidWorks 2026. The Visibility Hierarchy SolidWorks has two separate mechanisms for hiding and showing components in a drawing view. Engineers frequently run into problems because they assume these mechanisms are equivalent, or that one overrides the other in a predictable direction. They are not equivalent. ...

A supplier discontinues a product line. You need to find every SKF bearing in a 600-part machine assembly and evaluate alternatives. With the standard Select menu you can hunt them down individually — or you can open Advanced Component Selection, type vendor = SKF, click Apply, and have every matching component highlighted in 3 seconds. Most SolidWorks users have never touched this tool. It sits one click off the cursor menu and handles property-based selection that would otherwise require a macro or a full PDM search. ...