Thumbnails: A picture is worth a 1,000 words

Are you getting these..

 

Instead of these??

Then you have some settings to pay attention to. Mostly this issue shows up in your SolidWorks file
open menu or even in Windows explorer. There are a few things to check, by default your options
inside of SolidWorks should be set like this:

 

Then you also want to check your open pane as well.

According to SolidWorks documentation you should use medium or large as the small setting can
affect your icons. This property can be given to all of your folders by going in and changing them in
the organize menu. **Note the Organize menu inside of the SolidWorks open menu can't do this
function**

For this we are going to need to open a Windows Explorer window.

While browsing folders in the Computer folder, you can apply the
current view setting to all folders on your computer that are optimized for the
same content as the folder you have open. For instance, the My Pictures folder
is optimized for picture files. If you open this folder and change the view to
Large Icons, you can apply the Large Icons view to every folder that's optimized
for pictures. (This setting does not apply when viewing files and folders using
libraries.)

1. 
   

   Open a folder, click the arrow next to the Views button
   on the toolbar, and choose a view setting.

   
   


2. 
   

   On the toolbar, click Organize, and then
   click Folder and search options.

   
   


3. 
   

   In the Folder Options dialog box, click the
   View tab, click Apply to Folders,
   click Yes, and then click OK.

   
   

For further information about the cause of this and registry settings to copy please see SolidWorks
Solution S-055085 and S-042805.

John Van Engen
CATI Tech Support
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.