Never seen this happen before, and no idea how it happened or how to fix it.. Lots of Googling and I haven't found anything so far... Basically, I have a simple part that a microswitch mounts inside. I've been using it in an assembly for a while now (test fixture) and decided to incorporate it into another part instead of it being an add-on that I need to mount. I have the physical part that I printed in ABS from the file, so it did work at one point.
Somehow (I think while in the assembly) I must have clicked on some button or menu while sneezing or something like that and my part turned invisible. It's not "transparent", it's just not there. If I open the part by itself, still not there... Part rebuilds fine, and I can save it as a .STEP file or .STL file and sure enough, it exists and looks like it should. But in the .SLDPRT file, it's not there. I even did a "Pack and go" to a new file, same thing. Removed all appearances, changed part material, it just isn't there. My feature tree says it is, and when I mouse over a feature it highlights the outline of that feature on the invisible part........
Wireframe does the same thing, section view shows a slice of "nothing".... Anyone have *any* idea what I possible could have done? I can rebuild the part from scratch by looking at the STEP or STL, but since I'm building it into another part it doesn't matter that much... But I really want to know what happened so if (when!) it happens again to a part I really need, I'll be able to fix it..
Anyone with SW 2011 care to open the .SLDPRT and see if it exists for you? And if it's still invisible, care to offer a guess as to why? Strange.... I love SolidWorks, but this kind of stuff drives me nuts.
What it should look like:
SW'11 part file: (~240Kb)
http://home.comcast.net/~riceburner9...bracket.SLDPRT