I know. It happened here as well. Five people and a large parrot fell over convulsing when they thought of the possibilities.
It’s one thing to use SolidWorks to turn your design and engineering department into a concept-crazy, model churning machine of product-cycle pleasure. It’s quite another to whip that interface into a tool that makes your modeling efforts spew forth profit from the hours save in design.
The difference will amaze you
It is weird… an interface has changed the way I work, and it happened nearly overnight. The difference is most noticeable when I transition back and forth between SolidWorks 2007 and SolidWorks 2009. Have you noticed that? If not, the new interface introduces some changes that may leave you wondering how to use these to optimize your modeling. Here’s what you need to know.
Scenes, Backdrops and backgrounds
SolidWorks 2008 gave you scenes, then SolidWorks 2009 introduced backdrops that moved with your model when rotating. Some people find this distracting and would rather use a plain, gradient or custom background. You can change the Realview scene to something other than one labeled ‘Backdrop’. That will get rid of a moving background. You also, still have the option of creating your own background.
Set it UP! If you use your own background, you’ll have to go through options to change backgrounds or back to using a scene. If you do use scenes, use the ‘Apply Scene’ toolbar icon from the View section to cycle through the scenes quickly.
RealView, Appearance Options and Colors
Confused about RealView and how appearance work in SolidWorks 2009? It’s pretty simple.
In SolidWorks 2009, there are no longer ‘Colors’. All the visual setting for your models are now set-up via a tiny little icon known as ‘Edit Appearance’
– Cute huh.
Very colorful, but packs a wallop when used in conjunction with Materials. The onscreen appearance callouts, that appears when you select a face, also allows you to quickly see where the appearance was applied and access to modify it.
Set it UP! It’s quicker to assign a material with an appearance already set, than to set materials and then set appearances. Setting up your own material database is one of the most efficient additions to creating models with accurate material properties and appearances.
The Shortcut Bar
Forget how scenes work, the flashy new appearance options and all the RealView details. The ‘Shortcut bar’ is what makes the interface work for you. It brings a context sensitive and customizable group of commands down where you’re working. It’s activated when you hit the ‘S’ key (default setting) on your keyboard.
If you have the ‘S’ key set to something already, just change it to another one. I have mine set on the ‘V’ key. Better yet, if you use a mouse with a thumb button, set that up to activate the Shortcut Bar.
Set it UP!
When you left-click on an entity a non-customizable menu will show up. The Shortcut bar, however, is customizable. Right-click on it and select customize. Set up common commands you use on here which are not on the left-click menu.
Toolbars
If you do what I talked about above with the shortcut bars, you’ll find yourself going to the toolbars less and less. In fact, I’ve eliminated all but the standard toolbar that takes up only a small portion of the screen.
Some think, especially with wide-screen monitors, that it doesn’t matter if toolbars are visible. I prefer to eliminate anything I’m not using. Getting rid of them, from the beginning, forced me to adapt to using the Shortcut bar and optimize my workflow. Pure efficiency. The same thing has happened with other engineers I work with that use the same settings.
Set it UP!
Turn all your toolbars off. Really, try it. Start working and see what commands you actually use, then add them to the Shortcut bar if they are not accessible through the left-click menu. Arrange them so it’s natural and easy to get to. There’s a download below with toolbar and Shortcut Bar settings.
Download
Here’s a download of my 2009 SolidWorks Options. It set everything except for System Options, so you can see what toolbar and keyboard settings I use.
I’m finding better ways to use features in the interface and setting to help optimize how engineering and design companies work. What about you?
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I'll be sending plenty of people this way. I got rid of my toolbars a while ago. Sharing your settings gets two thumbs up!
Going to try these out, I hope, soon. Will comment if I get the chance.
Thanks
Thanks Charles. I tested and played with 2008 while the company I'm with stayed on 2007. (paaaaaaaain) When 2009 beta came out , I had to draw the line and say we were upgrading. There was some questions people had about the interface which prompted this post, and altogether the move was excellent.
Awesome post Josh!
I actually did a presentation on how to create a smoother work flow at the West Michigan SolidWorks User Group meeting in March. I am always looking for ways to clean up the interface and stay in the middle of the screen by the model as much as possible.
Thanks for doing this post, its great!!!
Thanks Jason! I really appreciate that. I'd love to see you presentation. I'm always looking for better ways to work within the task of modeling.
Hey, Josh. Great article. While I also do not know a way to edit the Left Click Menu, you can turn it off. For those who have used SW for years and miss being able to Right Click to do things like Edit Sketch and Edit Feature. All you have to do is go to Tools, Customize and on the Toolbars tab uncheck “Show on Selection” and “Show in Shortcut Menu” from the “Context toolbar settings” category on the right.
One of my co-workers recently pointed this out to me and I'm exploiting his expertise.
Haven't tried the setting yet, but I did have a moment of epiphany. I use a nice ligitech mouse with an application switch button. I never use that button, but remembered you can assign other things to it…like a keystroke assignment. Made that “S” and can now bring up the shortcut menu without using the keyboard.
I use a space-mouse, and don't usually keep my finger right on the “s” key, so I wasn't using the shortcut menu as often as I “should”. I totally used it in the 2009 beta, but kind of forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me of it and I figured others may have assignable buttons on their mice that can be used for that or any other of the shortcut features in SW.
Hi Josh,
Great post.
How do you add the “shortcut bar” to the thumb button of the mouse?
Thanks.
Hey Scott, thanks man. The mouse setting can usually be found in the Control Panel (Start, Controp Panel, Mouse). If the mouse came with a disk, there is a program you can load that will allow you to set up options for your mouse. IF you can't find it, I'd talk to your IT guy or other computer wiz.
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