Since its release in 1995 SOLIDWORKS has been one of the industry leading pieces of software for computer aided design (CAD). It was created to allow designers and engineers to bring their product designs to life with ease and precision.
SOLIDWORKS has continued to develop over the years and has become one of the best tools to use for CAD.
Being able to use SOLIDWORKS efficiently is an incredibly useful skill to have under your belt. Not only will it help you know your way around the programme, it will also help you become more productive by customising the tool to how you work best.
Before you get stuck into these hacks, we’ve created a SOLIDWORKS cheat sheet of commands you can use to speed things up.
Customise Your Toolbars
Start off by customising your toolbar so you have your most frequently used tools at your fingertips.
Go to Tools → Customise, and drag/drop the commands you’d like to a location on your toolbars.
It’s as simple as that.
You can customise what commands your mouse can do with a right-click and drag.
Navigate to tools → Customise, and select the ‘Mouse Gestures’ tab to select which commands can be actioned from the wheel.
The S-key can be set to produce a shortcut toolbar.
Tools → Customise
At the top right of the screen there is a search by to search commands.
Use this to search for any command and launch them by pressing enter.
If you have access to a separate 3D mouse it will make it easier to manipulate the model, you are working on.
You can speed up your sketching and add specific dimensions to lines, rectangles, circles and arcs as you create them.
To enable the feature, go to Tools → Options under the System Options tab select the Sketch area and check “Enable on screen numeric input on entity creation”.
You can add a dimension to the outside of an arc instead of the centre point.
Hold the SHIFT Key whilst clicking on a circle or arc to quickly add dimensions to the outside.
You can select all entity types in parts, assemblies and drawings by dragging a selection box with the pointer.
When you select from left to right, all items within the box are selected. When you select from right to left, items crossing the box boundaries are also selected.
Click options or tools → options → selection → Box Selection
You can select items by free handing the lasso tool around the parts you would like to select.
Click options or tools → options → selection → Lasso Selection
For clockwise lasso selection, the lasso selects only items contained in the lasso loop. For counter clockwise lasso selection, the lasso selects sketch entities in the lasso loop and items that cross the lasso.
This feature is helpful when you can’t start the drag from a blank region. It makes it easier to exclude items you don’t want to be selected.
Without Select over Geometry, if you start the drag on top of geometry, the drag fails and the geometry under your initial click is selected:
Click options or tools → options → selection → Select over Geometry:
Use the ‘a’ key to quickly switch from line to tangent arc command.
You can multi-select two sketch entities and pick the ‘point’ command on the sketch toolbar to create a virtual sharp at the intersection.
The contour selection window allows you to select a single piece of your sketch to extrude, cut, etc.
Create an offset plane quickly by holding CTRL + dragging a corner point of plane.
Accept commands by clicking the right mouse button and selecting the accept icon.
To rotate in 90-degree increments;
Hold SHIFT + arrow keys
Hold ALT + arrow key to rotate in-plane
Select triad in the bottom left corner then select an axis;
Hold SHIFT + Click an axis to rotate 90 degrees around that axis
Hold ALT + Click an axis to rotate in 15-degree increments
Zoom to Fit;
Double-click middle button
Roll around an edge
Click on middle mouse button + drag on a model edge to rotate about it
Rotate around Scene Floor
Right mouse click in space and select to enable
CTRL + SHIFT + Z
The spacebar can be used to create and save custom view orientations
Smart Mates
To quickly mate an entity;
Hold ALT + drag
Rotate a part in place
Right click and drag
System options → Display/Selection
To select the transparent part;
Hold SHIFT
Quickly hide parts
Hold the TAB key, and hover over the part you’d like to hide.
Show the part by using SHIFT + TAB and hovering over where the hidden part would be.
Multiple-select 3 faces, then hit the Mate command automatically invokes a Symmetry Mate
Multiple-select 4 faces, then hit the Mate command automatically invokes a Width Mate
Disable Sketch Relations
Hold the CTRL key to avoid creating snaps/relations in a drawing
Break View Alignment on placement of view
Hold CTRL key before clicking to place
Use SHIFT + drag a dimension to move to from one view to another
Use CTRL + drag a dimension to copy it to another view
Add another leader to note
CTRL + drag on an existing leader to create another leader
Angle dimension shortcut
Select a line, and an endpoint of that same line. Use the quadrant selections for angle
Dimension WITHOUT creating virtual sharp
While dimensioning, right-click an entity and select ‘find intersection’.
Select a second entity to dimension to the virtual sharp.
We’ve put together a cheat sheet of SOLIDWORKS commands to help you whizz around the programme.
Download it here;