Setting Up the SolidWorks Interface: Part 2

Part 2 could go several different ways. There were so many things that I should have included in the first part, but it was already getting too big. Here is a graphic I used in one of the books. Well, minus the red squiggly lines. I had to put this together in PowerPoint because you can’t get all of these interface elements together at the same time in the real world.

One of the things I should have mentioned was the icon size for toolbar icons. With super high resolution displays, bad eyesight, and people using phones to read blogs, sometimes I have to use big icons to take screen shots. But that really messes with the interface if you actually use the software. Anyway, this is information that should have been in the previous article.

Title Bar Toolbar

The Title Bar Toolbar is the default toolbar right next to the SolidWorks logo at the top of the screen. This is the only toolbar that is available before you open anything up. If you mess this toolbar up, you can really hamstring yourself. Just think about what tools you want to have available when nothing is open. Of course you need the New and Open tools. That’s the first part of thinking about this toolbar.

You can customize this toolbar in the same way that you customize other toolbars – Tools>Customize.

Next you need to think about things you might want there that you might need in any situation, like undo, redo, select, save or print. I like to add a shortcut to Tools>Options here too.

But – and compromise is at the heart of all interface set up – you have limited space. So you can’t just put everything up here. As you shrink the width of the window, the first thing to get squeezed out is the file name, then the Title Bar Toolbar we are discussing, then the window controls in the upper right, and finally the main menu, if you have it expanded.

The SW logo is the only thing that never gets squeezed out as the window shrinks.

So when you set up the Title Bar Toolbar, you need to also consider how much you also need the main menu.

I’ve seen people with such strong prejudices about interface elements that they will avoid certain tasks rather than make the main menu available. Don’t be silly. Sometimes you need it. If you are wasting time expanding the main menu, or worse yet, if there are tools you don’t know about because they are only in an interface element you avoid, you need to rethink what you’re doing. Seriously. The IDSA isn’t going to pass you over for a major award because someone saw you using a text menu once. They might for being a pompous ass, but that’s a different story.

Task Bar

The Task Bar is the bar at the bottom of the display. It is usually a read-only sort of interface element, but there are a few interactive aspects. Such as the Tags area, where you can apply tags to parts (who does this?). You can also change the document units here, which I’m sure is the most used part of this interface.

The read-only sections of the Task Bar are also important, like the command prompts, sketch state, and the measurement or coordinate position information.

Heads Up View Toolbar

The Heads Up View (HUV) toolbar was controversial when it first came out. It shares space with other elements, and they are all kind of competing. The document window controls, ConfirmationCorner and the CommandManager tabs all share this space, and sometimes you get overlaps. When they do overlap, SW has started moving the HUV down a little bit.

In any case, now, I think this toolbar is unavoidable. I mean you can access it all from other places, but these tools are so convenient, and so frequently used that I don’t think you can or should turn this toolbar off.

The HUV can be customized and turned off like other toolbars. Use Tools>Customize to add/remove tools, and Customize>Toolbars to turn it off (listed as View(Heads up)).

The one edit I might suggest to this is to remove some of the view manipulation tools you don’t need, or control through your spaceball, mouse or hotkeys. I would remove Zoom to Fit, Zoom to Area, and Rotate View. Maybe Edit Appearance as well. Trimming this toolbar down will only help you use the stuff that remains faster.

RMB and LMB (Context Toolbars)

Right Mouse Button (RMB) menus have gotten huge. They are so huge that on small displays, some RMB menus will extend off the top and bottom of the screen. Especially in assemblies. To try to save some room, SW converted the top several commands to just use icons, with the rest of the commands using icons and text.

Whether or not these are efficient for you depends on how well you know the interface. If you have to resort to using Tooltips, then the icon-based interface is a waste of time for you. You can turn off the icon bars at the top of the RMB menu, and put those commands back in the text list, but the RMB menu will get bigger.

To control how these menus (context toolbars) work, go to Tools>Customize, and there is a section for Context Toolbar Settings. When SW says “shortcut menu”, it means the RMB. When SW says “Show on Selection”, it’s talking about the LMB context toolbar.

To me, I don’t like the context toolbar on top of the RMB menus, because I don’t like to mix icons and text, especially if you have to use tooltips to understand the icons. It’s just a mess.

If you’re really a bit OCD, you can go into each menu, and remove stuff that you’re sure you’re not going to use (with the Customize option at the bottom of each menu). Some of these menus are really out of control.

Even though I don’t like the context toolbar on the RMB, having that same context bar available as an LMB menu saves me a lot of time. Ok, maybe I’m a hypocrite, so sue me. Just selecting something, and then being able to select what I want to do with that selection really saves time/clicks/motion/etc. So I use the LMB as much as I can, and if a tool isn’t there, I’ll resort to the RMB.

Again, you can set all this up to reflect how you best work. You don’t have to agree with me, you just have to get your work done. Most of the time, the interface isn’t what slows me down. I’m usually scratching my head about what to do, or how to solve some problem I’ve created.

Gestures/Radial Menus

I’m not a fan of the radial menus. I think requiring motion as a part of the interface is highly inefficient. The mouse is a clumsy object. I use a trackball, and even that’s clumsy. A stylus is less clumsy, but I don’t have a 30″ touch screen to use it on yet, so I’m waiting to pass judgment on that.

If you use the radial menu, that’s cool. Just set up the gesture limits and the number of items on the donut. The settings are found at Tools>Customize>Mouse Gestures. Set up the wheel for all 4 environments – Part, Sketch, Assembly, and Drawing.

Gestures are turned ON by default. You might be able to save some memory or speed or something by turning if off. You can also print out the gesture guides to remind you (another big inefficiency).

Hotkeys

SolidWorks uses so much bad terminology, they call hotkeys “shortcut keys”. And then you have the shortcut icons (on the desktop), and the RMB shortcut menus, and blah blah blah. Hotkeys are single keys or keys + modifiers that you can use to access commands through the keyboard.

Call me an old fuddy duddy, but this is the most efficient way to access commands. The only thing I don’t like about it is that you’ve got to memorize a lot of stuff. The more you use the software, the more efficient hotkeys are for what you do.

Hotkeys are any letter or function key or the spacebar, and can be used alone or with modifiers Shift, Ctrl, Alt used alone or in combination. To set up your hotkeys, go to Tools>Customize>Keyboard. You can use the Search For box to find a command you want to assign, and then SW will tell you if that hotkey has already been assigned, and if so what to, and then ask if you want to reassign it. This is really nice interface once you sit down to work with it. You can print out the list or copy it to put it into Excel if you want. You can sort columns. If you sort by the Shortcut column, you can see all of the assigned hotkeys. Of course referring to a printed out list for hotkeys wastes the time you were hoping to save, but, you know, whatever.

I like to keep the default settings for the most part, but lately, SW has gone a little crazy and has added default hotkeys to a lot of stuff I’ll never use, like Select Annotation View, with the single quote key!?!?!

But there are some really useful default hotkeys, too, like all of the Zoom keys and Ctrl+Shift+Z for Previous View. All of the assigned hotkeys for specific views, like Ctrl+1 for the Front view. All the hotkeys for view/hide items. All of the selection filter hotkeys, the list is huge. I would recommend that you spend some time figuring out what’s possible, and then make up your own list. Make a list of things that you do very frequently. And then make a list of commands that are hard to get to.

There are a lot of schemes that you can use to set up hotkeys. I use alliteration. So the Options hotkey is O. Boundary Surface is Shift+B. Measure is M. Some people assign keys according to how easy they are to reach and how frequently they are used. Like Measure might be A. Check out this previous blog post about setting up the interface. Some people assign hotkeys according to what AutoCAD did 20 years ago.

Some companies try to standardize hotkeys. This is good for some people, and bad for others. It really depends on the situation. Do you really have people trading computers that frequently? Best practice might be that you can’t override default hotkeys, but you should be free to add any new ones that you like. I can see it would be a hassle if someone had reprogrammed the Z and Shift+Z to be Self Destruct or something like that. Even if I don’t agree, I can see where the standardization thing comes from.

More…

There’s a lot more. S key menus, setting up the FeatureManager, detachable PropertyManager, and some of the little tips that you need to know as you work, as well as the Display Pane, Magnifying Glass, and a lot of assembly specific stuff.

There will be at least one more part to this series. Tell a friend.