Design View Representation Locked

[kkornocksr]

How can I Unlock the Design View Representation?

[jtylerbc]

Right-click on the name of the representation in the browser, and pick Unlock.

Unless you're talking about the Master representation, which you can't unlock.  By definition it is supposed to have everything visible, so it can't be unlocked.

[kkornocksr]

It is the Master, but here is my problem. The Assembly Model was created from a Step file originally modeled in Solidworks. When I do some thngs like Change Color of Parts, or Visisbility of parts, and then save & close, I get this message "The current Design Representation is locked.Changes against it will not be saved. If you want to keep those changes please create a new Design Representation or unlock the current one". When I close and re-open, the color changes disappear, and everything that had visibility removed, are visible again. It allows me to add new parts, create constraints, etc. and all that is saved, but the color changes & visibility resort back to their original state. Any ideas?

[jtylerbc · Accepted solution]

Yes.  I don't  think the fact that the files come from Solidworks has anything to do with your problem.  Color overrides are considered changes to the view representation, and so are visibility changes.  Obviously, you can't do either in a locked view rep.  You'd have the same problem if these were all native Inventor files.

The solution is to use a different view rep other than Master.  To expand on what I said in the previous post, Master is defined as "Everything on, Everything enabled, No color overrides."  You can not change the Master rep, ever.  It is permanently locked.  So, if you need to make changes, you need to use something other than the Master rep.  This is why, unless it has been deleted, there is both a "Master" and "Default" view representation.  Normally, you should be working in Default, or some custom rep you created, and not the Master.

If there is a Default available, switch to it and make your changes.  If not, create a new representation, and call it Default (or whatever you would prefer) and use the new one.

[kkornocksr]

There was no Default, so I created it, renamed it and saved, and that worked. Thank you very much.

[jtylerbc]

That may be the one way in which Solidworks affected the situation.  It's been a while since I imported anything from SW, so I don't recall seeing this myself, but maybe it didn't create the Default rep during the import.

Also possible it was created during import, and just got deleted, especially if you're not the only person working on the files.

Glad I could help.