Utilizing SolidWorks Shortcuts
Image courtesy of Nathan Bergman and Christophe Demuynck
Clem See
Shounco Design Studios
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Workflow – The basics
Command Manager
Heads up toolbar
Context Toolbars
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Workflow – The fun stuff
Shortcut Toolbar – “S” key
Customizable in Sketch Mode, Part Mode, Assembly Mode, and Drawing Mode
Mouse Gestures
Sketch Mode
Part Mode
Power Tip: Use your flyout buttons
Assembly Mode
Drawing Mode
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Workflow - Customizing Mouse Gestures
To Get the most out of this
switch to 8 gestures
Click on your column
headers to organize
Use “Search for” to find
Those sneaky commands
Organize for muscle
memory
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Workflow – Capture my customization
Copy Settings Wizard
In the current version you are able to pick and choose what you save and
restore. ****Note**** what is being copied and replaced are registry keys
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Shortcut - Misc
•Keyboard Shortcuts
•API
•Macros
•Record your own, or see if you can get lucky, google “SolidWorks
Macros” and see what have been made
•http://www.lennyworks.com/solidworks/default.asp?ID=20
•http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/Macros.aspx
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Hardware:
Me
Want!
The SpaceExplorer.
You couldn’t pry this thing from my
cold wooden hand.
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Hardware customization
There are many ways hardware can help a designers
speed and efficiency
Esc
Ctrl
Alt
Shift
FTW
View Buttons
2D Button!
Multi button mice can also
Be customized to include
Ctrl, Esc, or any Keyboard
Shortcut.
Power Tip: Double Click
Mouse wheel zooms to fit.
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Hardware Suggestions
•Dual Monitors
•Better Graphics Cards (or maybe just an up to date driver)
•http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html
•Power Tip: SolidWorks Rx can tell you if you need a new driver
•More Ram
•Not Hardware but still bears mentioning:
•Win 7 x64
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Templates
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Templates
•The Short Story about templates is that you can have them for parts, assemblies,
and drawings
•They contain everything that you customize in the Feature Manager Tree
(hide/show planes), View Menu (view planes), and the Document Properties Tab of
the Options
Power Tip: hide/show planes
In the FMT is different than
Turning View Planes on and
off in the view menu
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Formats
Formats are ONLY the borders (size information), title blocks, and the information
contained in the title blocks. A drawing template itself is just a blank sheet
Pure Drawing Template
Drawing Template with a
Sheet Format
Power Tip: If you choose to start a new drawing
and get the sheet format choice displayed to the
left, then you have Pure Drawing Formats.
Deleting the Sheet format shown above and saving
As a Drawing Template will create a Pure Drawing
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Template.
Templates and Formats continued
Once you have a Pure Drawing Template, your New Drawing list can be made
much smaller. Any changes to a drawing template that needs to be made, such
as balloon size can be done in one shot by opening the Template, cancelling the
Size/Format choice, making the change and saving over the original template.
Changes to the Format (border, title blocks) must be done to each individually
however.
To save the Template, go into
Save As.
To save the Format, choose
Save Sheet Format from here
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Xpert Tools
DraftXpert: One stop shop for adding, removing or changing Drafts
FilletXpert: One stop shop for adding, removing or changing Fillets
FeatureXpert: SolidWorks solves errors in APPLIED FEATURES
SketchXpert: SolidWorks shows you how to repair over defined
sketches
Click Here to start SketchXpert
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Sketch Shortcuts
•Tools -> Dimensions -> Fully Defined Sketch (or right click on active sketch)
•If for whatever reason (spline, investigateing under defined situation etc.)
you want to have SolidWorks fully define a sketch for you.
•Tools -> Sketch -> Check Sketch For Feature
•Have SolidWorks show you what is causing a problem in a particular
sketch for a feature.
•Line to Tangent Arc transition (hover over last point, or press A)
•Design Library
•Blocks
•Copy/Paste
•Shared Sketch
•To Reuse Sketch entities from previous sketch, the previous (absorbed
sketch) just needs to be visible, ie “shown”
•Options -> System Options -> Enable on screen numeric input on entity
creation
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Part Shortcuts
•Patterns
•Copy/Paste
•Statistics: SolidWorks displays the rebuild time of each feature, giving you
valuable information to find the feature that is making your part take so long to
rebuild
•CONFIGURE FEATURE: Right click on feature to be configured
Power Tip: the right click CONFIGURE XXX operation is a much streamlined tool
for creating new configurations, and easily controlling features (supression state)
dimensions, and instance numbers. It can fully replace the excel based
configuration table in many cases.
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Assembly Shortcuts
•Splitting the FMT to view the Assembly Tree and component mates, or
Configuration Manager at the same time
•Alt Drag on a Face/Edge/Vertices for instant mating without entering Mate tool
•Control Drag from FMT, or Graphic Window to make a copy of a
component/sub assembly
•Copy With Mates
•Mirror Components
•FEATURE DRIVEN PATTERNS
•Assembly Visualization
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Detail Drawing Shortcuts
•Custom Property Tab Builder: Easy to use sharable form for standardizing
custom properties, complete with dropdown list, radio buttons, configurable
categories
•Define Title Block: Missed a field in the title block? Set this up in your Sheet
Format, and edit the missing field in the title block. Propagates back to the
Custom Properties/Property Tab builder fields.
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Search Shortcuts
•Feature Manager Tree Filter search, filters named features, absorbed
sketches, tags.
•SolidWorks Explorer: Where used is quite slow, but can be a lifesaver
•PDMWorks Workgroup: Many have it already just not set up, other than
providing PDM capabilities, the search capability and the where used records
are huge time savers. I could even make a case that a single engineer could
benefit greatly from this tool.
•Windows/Google Desktop Searches: Instant results based on file name
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Suggested Viewing
SolidWorks Time Savers Series on SolidWorks YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/solidworks
•View Manipulation
•Design Library
•Mate References
•Templates
•Task Scheduler
•Macros
•Feature-Driven Patterns
•Assembly Techniques
•Interface Customization
•And much more
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Thank You