I have a composer SMG file that's was made by mergining in 3 different configurations of the same SolidWorks assembly.

So I had to change the geometry on one of the configurations in SW and when I update the assembly in composer, I lose my appearance changes (colors, environment effects, textures) to the composer geometry and changes the visibility of the components in the saved views.  Effectively, I have to go back and re-apply all of my appearances.

My procedure for updating the composer model is:

turn on assembly selection mode

pick the node in the tree that has the same name as my SolidWorks assembly (I did rename the node in Composer which I've learned is a feature they don't want you to use)

Goto File==>Update==>Composer Document

In the file navigation dialog

change my document type setting to SolidWorks Assembly

browse to my assembly and select it

On the configuration panelI pick the configuration with the changes that I want to bring in

On the import panel I set the options as they were when I imported the assembly the first time

I then import the model

It updates all of the views and, as I said before, the appearances are all wiped clean and actor visibility is all screwed up.  I also lose rendering settings for components in my views.

I've tried this with a couple of minor variations in procedure and had a little success getting some appearances to hold on, but there's still a lot of rework following the update.

My composer version is 2013 SP2 X64 build 6.11.2.2284.

If anyone has advice on this procedure I would appreciate it.

John