Setting Up the SolidWorks Interface: Part 1

The SolidWorks interface is huge. It has many components, and some of them work better than others, some are better ideas than others, and some are more efficient than others.

People have different goals for interface that they use, and not all of those goals are rational. How hard must it be to be a software company trying to chase down irrational goals?!?!? But that’s the lot of software developers, especially when you develop software for people who think they are smart.

What are the goals that people have for the SolidWorks interface?

• Familiar (Windows, Apple, Linux, MS-DOS…)
• Cool or futuristic
• Either uses or doesn’t use certain hardware or techniques (mouse, track ball, track pad, touch screen, stylus, gestures etc…)
• Efficient – fewest clicks/button pushes
• Efficient – least motion
• Efficient – takes up least space
• Efficient – requires least memorization
• “Discoverability”

Some of these criteria are contradictory and (in my opinion) some are silly, but everybody wants something different, and everybody has a reason, even if it’s not always a good one.

When I used to run AutoCAD, a long long time ago, I used to pride myself on how fast I could draw lines from the keyboard, and how fast I could fly through commands without touching the mouse. You had to memorize layers of the command structure to do this. One time, just for fun, I put all of the commands on the screen at the same time. I had access to everything, but it left me with about a postage stamp size worth of graphics area to draw in. Both of those were bad ideas, but they helped me learn the limits and limitations of interface usage.

Before we start, I have to give a little disclaimer. In the past I used to have a standard interface that I really liked, and I kept the settings so I could re-establish it where ever I went. But when you write stuff for publication, you have to use a standardized interface. For that, I just use the stock interface with the exception that I add the Sketch toolbar to the right side of the screen. So if the interface shown in the screen shots seems unimaginative, that’s because it is. Sorry, that’s the world I live in.

You’re probably not going to get your ideal interface set up with just a single interface element. You’re probably going to have to make use of a few. Some elements lend themselves better to certain situations than others. I’ve probably bitten off more than I can chew by starting this blog topic, it’s already setting up as a multi-part article. There’s really a lot going on, and really, a lot of subtlety in places where you might not expect it. Plus, I’m sure I’m going to forget about a couple of things, and people are going to remind me about some really cool stuff. I used to be able to remember everything, but … well, I can’t any more.

Here are the areas of the interface and some ways in which you might set them up.

Main Menu

The main menu is collapsible, in fact, by default I think it comes collapsed. There is a small triangle to the right of the SW logo that enables you to collapse it, if the push pin (on the right) is not pinning it in place.

This is of course the old staple of Windows programs. Some people have a real aversion to it, but you need to understand how it is structured, because there are some commands you won’t find anywhere but here. And yes, the structure has changed in the last several years for some commands, so if you had it memorized at one point, you owe it to yourself to go back and look at it again.

I keep this pinned in place, because I tend to use it now and then, especially for tools I don’t use frequently.

Alt Commands

The main menu can also be invoked through the Alt commands. This is an old way of doing things, but if you are familiar with it, you can really fly through things, and not just in SolidWorks, but in a lot of Windows programs.

If you press the Alt key, certain letters will underline in the main menu. Pressing Alt+F will expand the File menu, and if you keep the Alt key down, you can then press O (Alt+O), and you’ll go to the File>Open dialog. So using the keyboard you can fly through the menus without touching the mouse or the arrow keys. How 1980’s, right?

One thing to be careful of here is that it’s possible to run into conflicts with the “keyboard shortcuts” or hotkeys, as I call them. If you assign a hotkey to Alt+F, be prepared for potential conflicts.

Customize Menu

At the bottom of each menu is a Customize Menu option that you can use to remove things from the menu. This makes a great prank for a Monday morning, or if you use a laptop with a small display, you can eliminate some commands you don’t use so you don’t have to scroll the menus on a short screen. There is no bigger waste of time than scrolling through a huge menu. Just if you take things off of these menus, please remember that you did it so you don’t make a stupid call to tech support and start screaming your head off when your eDrawings menu item is no longer there.

Standard Toolbars

People still use standard toolbars, but mostly just to supplement the Command Manager, which we’ll talk about next. Standard toolbars can be placed horizontally or vertically at the top, bottom, or either side, or can be floated in the middle of the screen. You can customize them to include any available buttons. To do this, go (through the main menu) to Tools>Customize>Commands, and drag the tool you want onto the toolbar where you want it. To remove tools, just drag them off the toolbar into blank space.

You can turn toolbars on or off in the Toolbars tab of the Customize window, shown below. In fact, a lot of your interface customization is done right here in this box.

Toolbars can be stretched out vertically or horizontally, or can be bunched up in a rectangle. When you have too many tools on a toolbar for the available monitor space you have, a double arrow shows at the end of the toolbar so you can expand the list. I think any time you have to do something to see more interface, it’s a waste of time. That includes stupid stuff like expanding menus, toolbars, and even the gestures stuff, or S menu when we get to that. You’re just wasting effort. Decide on what efficiency is most important to you, and use that as a goal. Don’t get so wrapped up in some idea (like the idea that you can run SolidWorks from a blank screen with no tools on it at all) that you lose sight of the tasks you have to complete.

Command Manager

I know I’m showing my age by doing this, but when the Command Manager first came out, it was pretty controversial. It wasted a lot of space (to the right), and you had to click back and forth between tabs, and it took up so much space. When I take screen shots for beginning users, I have to turn on the tool names (RMB <right mouse button> on the Command Manager). These options are also available on the Tools>Customize>Toolbars dialog. To customize the tabs shown in the Command Manager, RMB on one of the tabs and turn things on or off.

I’d give one piece of advice here. Make sure that you have the Sketch toolbar up separate from the Command Manager. If you try to use the Sketch tab on the Command Manager, you find yourself constantly switching back and forth between the Feature>Sketch or whatever else you’re working on. So just put Sketch toolbar up along the right hand side. Things really work a lot better that way.

If you need to, you can also start additional “groups” (the gray vertical lines in the CM) to help organize tools in the CM, or move the text either under or to the side of the icons.

Beyond that, you can add new tabs, or copy tabs to other environments (assembly and drawing).

The Command Manager can even be undocked or set up vertically. To do this, drag a tab away from its location, and some docking icons will show up at the borders of the screen, drop the dragged tab onto the docking icon, or just let it go in the graphics window to let the CM float. This sounds a little crazy, but if you have a dual monitor set up on a dedicated SolidWorks machine, an undocked Command Manager isn’t a bad idea. There are a lot of things you can do with a dual display.

I’m going to have to call it for now. I’ll be back with Part 2 where we’ll talk about some other things. Like maybe the RMB and LMB menus.