Showing & Hiding

Hide and show parts of your model — components, bodies, reference planes, axes, drawing views and annotations — without deleting anything. On Siemens NX you can also move objects between layers and turn layers on and off.

Hiding is not deleting, and it is not suppressing. A hidden component stays fully loaded and still counts towards mass and interference checks; it is simply not drawn. Deleting removes it; suppressing unloads it from the solve and drops it from mass properties. When you want something out of the way but still there, hide it.

Hiding and showing an entity

Ask in plain language — CoPilot picks the right entity kind and reads the result back to confirm it actually changed.

Hide all the reference planes

Hide the pin component

Hide every component except the pin

Show the solid body again

Which planes are currently hidden?

What you can show or hide:

Entity	Example
Components / occurrences	“hide the collar”, “show all components”. Use “including its sub-assembly” to apply to the whole subtree.
Solid bodies	“hide the solid body”, “show body Boss-Extrude1”
Sheet / surface bodies	“hide the surface bodies”
Reference / work planes	“hide all planes”, “show the Front plane”
Axes	“hide the axes”
Drawing views	“hide the section view” (support varies by CAD — see below)
Annotations	“hide the dimensions on this sheet”

It confirms, it does not guess

Every hide or show is read back per entity: the reply reports the number of entities it verified changed, not the number it attempted. If something did not actually change — for example a CAD document-level display switch was overriding a plane’s own flag — the operation fails and tells you which entity stayed put, rather than claiming success.

Naming is exact first: a full name matches exactly, and a partial name is only accepted when it resolves to a single entity. Asking to hide Plane1 will never quietly also hide Plane10 — if the name is ambiguous, CoPilot lists the candidates and asks.

Do not check visibility by volume. Hiding never changes volume or mass — that is the point. To confirm what is hidden, ask “which components are visible?” rather than re-measuring the part. See Verifying Results.

What each CAD supports

Components, bodies, planes and axes work in all four 3D systems. Drawing-view and annotation hiding, and the way reference geometry behaves, differ:

SOLIDWORKS — all seven entity kinds, including drawing views and sheet annotations.
Autodesk Inventor — components, bodies, work planes and work axes. Note that a new part template starts with its origin planes already hidden; ask to show them if you need them. Inventor also has document-level visibility master switches that CoPilot adjusts for you when needed.
Siemens NX — components, bodies, datum planes and axes (NX calls hiding “blank”). Plus full layer control (below).
Solid Edge — components, bodies and reference planes. Each reply names the document it acted on, so you always know what was affected.

Where a particular kind is not directly supported, CoPilot says so plainly rather than pretending it worked.

Layers (Siemens NX)

NX organises objects onto 256 numbered layers. CoPilot can move objects onto a layer, change a layer’s state, set the active work layer, and — new — report what is on each layer so it can verify the result instead of writing blind.

List the layers and how many objects are on each

Move all the datum planes to layer 61

Hide layer 61

Make layer 20 the work layer

Layer moves are verified per object. Some objects — datum coordinate-system members, view and annotation objects — live on NX-reserved layers and cannot be moved; when that happens CoPilot reports honestly which objects stayed where they were rather than claiming they all moved.

A useful pattern: isolate one thing

To study a single component in an assembly, hide the rest, look (or take a screenshot), then bring everything back:

Hide the fork, eye and collar, leaving only the pin. Then take an isometric screenshot. Then show them all again.