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Scenes and Lighting

Scenes and their lighting schemes are closely connected.

Sources of Scene Lighting

Lighting in SOLIDWORKS scenes comes from ambient and directional lights. The scene environment is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image that surrounds the scene spherically, creating realistic and reflections.

Scene lighting is visible in SOLIDWORKS OpenGL graphics and RealView. Light type is ambient, point, spot, and directional lights and sunlight.

When you apply a new scene, ambient and directional lights automatically update in the SOLIDWORKS lights. Each point, spot, and directional light appear in SOLIDWORKS Lights .

Editing Lighting

You can add spot, point, and directional lights and sunlight to the SOLIDWORKS lights. When you add a light, it is on by default in SOLIDWORKS lights.

Saving a Scene

When you save a scene, all applied point, spot, and directional lights are saved as part of the scene. When you apply a new scene, all lights are replaced with the lighting scheme of the new scene. You can override these rules by selecting the lighting option Keep light when scene changes, available in the PropertyManagers for directional, point, and spot lights.

The default scene, 3 Point Faded does not have lights associated with it. If you select another scene and then select the default scene, the lights from the previous scene appear for the default scene.

For example, the default scene has 4 lights in the Lights folder. You select the Ambient Only scene and then select 3 Point Faded. Now, the Lights folder lists only an ambient light.