Customising SolidWorks keyboard shortcuts, Mouse Gestures and the Shortcut bar

Customising the SolidWorks interface is one of the best ways to improve your day-to-day efficiency in SolidWorks. Once you have a range of tweaks made, you’ll wonder how you got by without them.

This video demonstrates how to customise keyboard shortcuts, Mouse Gestures and the Shortcut bar, including modifying fly-out toolbars. You should make commands which you use regularly as easy to access as possible. Tools that are used less can be put in a fly out toolbar or left from the main drop down menus.

You can back up or apply your SolidWorks user settings on another computer with the Copy Setting Wizard. This copies toolbar layouts, keyboard shortcuts, menu customisation and System Options. It can be found under Start Menu >> All Programs >> SolidWorks >> SolidWorks Tools >> Copy Settings Wizard and run through the Copy Settings Wizard process. To apply your settings on another machine double-click on the SLDREG file that was created to restore.

Alternatively, you can export a list of keyboard shortcuts from SolidWorks >> (start a new Part if none are open) >> Tools >> Customize >> Keyboard tab >> Check "Show only commands with shortcuts assigned" >> Copy List. This will copy the settings to the Windows Clipboard and you can then paste them into Excel or Notepad, etc.