Matt,
This is a pretty straight forward thing.. let me know the steps you have taken to view them and I can tell you whats wrong here..
First you have to select the "Display Shaded Planes" option in the Tools Options menu
then you have to make sure that they are "turned on" graphically. Remember that the system planes (front top, and right) are hidden by default and you must Right click on each of them in the feature manager and select show to see them.
Next. under the "view" dropdown menu you must also tell solidworks that you wish to see all planes by clicking on "planes"
That should do it for most cases..
there is one exception.
If you are in an assembly that falls into your "large assembly mode" threshold all entities under the view dropdown will be grayed out and hidden.
If you want to see them you need to either turn off large assembly mode (Tools/Large Assembly Mode) or you need to modify your preferences under the Tools/options/large assembly mode, to not hide axes, planes, sketches etc.
Regards,
Jon
jgbena@yahoo.com