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How To: Drive the Texture of a Part (KB13103010)

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How To: Drive the Texture of a Part

DriveWorks provides the ability to drive a model's texture.

To do this, create and capture a custom property in the model called "DWTexture", for more information see Custom Properties.

There must be a texture applied in the captured master part in order for DriveWorks to swap this out for the driven texture.

SOLIDWORKS 2026

When using SOLIDWORKS 2026 to generate models that require color or texture to be driven the SOLIDWORKS system option Appearance Visual Style must be set to Legacy Appearances

  1. Open SOLIDWORKS and select Tools>Options
  2. From the System Options tab, select the Display menu item.
  3. From the Appearance Visual Style section, select Legacy Appearances.

The result of the rule for the DWTexture custom property should take the form:

PathToTextureBitmap|ScalePercentage|AngleInDegrees

For example:

"\\Data\Textures\Plastic.jpg|80|90"

Will result in the Plastic texture, which is located on the network, being applied at a scale of 80% and a rotation of 90 degrees.

ScalePercentage

The "Driven Scale" is the actual value sent to the model (multiplying factor, not percentage) and "Scale Percentage" is the value calculated and written in the rule.

We can define DrivenScale as 100 / ScalePercentage.

To calculate the value required in your rule: ScalePercentage = 100 / DrivenScale.

Examples

If you require 400% scaling this is the same as having a DrivenScale of 4. Therefore, ScalePercentage = 25 (100 / 4).

If you require the final size to be 50% of the original, ScalePercentage = 200 (100 / 0.5).

Folders

SOLIDWORKS textures are ordinarily installed a folder inside the SOLIDWORKS install directory called "SOLIDWORKS\data\Images\textures"

For example:

C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS\data\Images\textures

Because the SOLIDWORKS installation directory can be different on different machines, SOLIDWORKS provides a location-independent way to refer to the textures folder, for example:

"<SystemTexture>\images\textures\wall\rustic.jpg|80|90"

Will result in the standard SOLIDWORKS Rustic Brick texture being applied at a scale of 80% and a rotation of 90 degrees.


Knowledge Base Article Ref:KB13103010