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The 7 Best SolidWorks Keyboard Tricks

by Josh on May 28, 2008 · View Comments

Yes, it happens to all of us. We’re cruising along with the mouse, clickin’ this way and that, and typing some notes with the keyboard. Life is simple. Then, we take our hand off the keyboard for a sip of coffee or a little stretch and… suddenly our finger shoots straight into our eye with a repeated jabbing motion and 2 hours of work are lost as you regain your sight.

A sad state of affairs my friend. We need to get back to keeping that hand on the keyboard. So, while engineer restraining systems are still being developed, here’s a few keyboard tricks you can use in SolidWorks to make sure you won’t be tempted to take your hand off the keyboard and risk permanent ocular impairment.

We’re going to have keyboards with us for a while longer I imagine, and using some of the buttons can just make modeling things go a lot faster. Here’s my favorite.

Ctrl
Hold down Ctrl, while sketching or after selecting an point to disable automatic relations
Hold down Ctrl, before selecting a sketch or feature to drag and copy a sketch or feature

Shift
Hold down Shift, while sketching some entities to increment in .05 increments
Hold down Shift, to move an unconstrained feature or group of sketch entities
Hold down Shift, to toggle selection through transparent objects, (better performance)

Alt
Hit Alt, to toggle the flyout menu in SolidWorks 2008
Hold down Alt, to move a part/assembly below an assembly in the FeatureManager

Hmm, but are there only seven?! What tricks do you have?

{ 70 comments }

erica December 18, 2008 at 10:39 am

can anyone tell me how to avoid or get out of those “operation cannot be interrupted or document is not accessible at this time” other than force-quitting solidworks? it's happening every 10-20 minutes and it's driving me nuts.

Josh M December 18, 2008 at 3:23 pm

hmmm, that could be cause by a few things. In 2009, you may be able to hit Esc to cancel the operation. To avoid them we would have to look at all the possible causes.

It could be the computer – make sure your temp folder is empty, do a defrag
It could be the graphics card – make sure it's an approved card
It could be the model – make sure there are no circular references (parts referencing parts)
It could be a combination – complicated library features and surfaces can increase rebuild times.

Hope this gives you a place to start looking Erica!

Josh M December 18, 2008 at 4:23 pm

hmmm, that could be cause by a few things. In 2009, you may be able to hit Esc to cancel the operation. To avoid them we would have to look at all the possible causes.

It could be the computer – make sure your temp folder is empty, do a defrag
It could be the graphics card – make sure it's an approved card
It could be the model – make sure there are no circular references (parts referencing parts)
It could be a combination – complicated library features and surfaces can increase rebuild times.

Hope this gives you a place to start looking Erica!

erica December 18, 2008 at 4:39 pm

can anyone tell me how to avoid or get out of those “operation cannot be interrupted or document is not accessible at this time” other than force-quitting solidworks? it's happening every 10-20 minutes and it's driving me nuts.

Josh M December 18, 2008 at 9:23 pm

hmmm, that could be cause by a few things. In 2009, you may be able to hit Esc to cancel the operation. To avoid them we would have to look at all the possible causes.

It could be the computer – make sure your temp folder is empty, do a defrag
It could be the graphics card – make sure it's an approved card
It could be the model – make sure there are no circular references (parts referencing parts)
It could be a combination – complicated library features and surfaces can increase rebuild times.

Hope this gives you a place to start looking Erica!

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