SolidWorks 2011 Parts Bible - Matt Lombard [30]
The most frequently used menu items are in the View, Insert, and Tools menus. All the menus shown in this section have all the possible options selected. As a result, the View menu in Figure 2.21 may contain options that are not available on your computer. Customizing menus is covered later in this chapter. Figure 2.21 also shows the Insert and Tools menus, along with an image of a menu with the Customize Menu mode activated.
FIGURE 2.21
Popular menus
You use the View menu primarily for turning on or off the visibility of entity types such as planes, sketches, or temporary axes. You can also do this by using hotkeys or by putting extra items on the View toolbar.
The Insert menu is used mostly for creating feature types for which you do not have a toolbar icon on the screen. For example, although the Move Face tool is on the Mold Tools toolbar, it has many uses aside from mold design. You can find the Move Face tool by choosing Insert⇒Face.
The Tools menu is used primarily for sketch entities or tools for which you have no icon on the screen. Several other commonly used tools, such as Measure, Equations, Customize, and Options, are also available in this menu.
You can customize menus by adding or omitting items. By using the Customize Menu option at the bottom of any menu — including shortcut (RMB) menus — you can remove items from any menu by clearing the check boxes next to tools that you do not use. To bring back the removed items, you can either go back to the Customize Menu or choose Tools⇒Customize⇒Options and click the Reset to Defaults buttons for menu and shortcut customization.
Note
Be careful not to confuse this Customize Menu selection with the Customize menu selection on the Tools menu. Figure 2.21 shows the Tools menu being customized. In addition, I do not recommend removing items from the menus. It doesn't take much for someone to need one of those items and no one remembers that it was supposed to be there or how to get it back.
Interpreting SolidWorks Use of the Word “Shortcut”
Between the SolidWorks and Microsoft interfaces, the word shortcut is used in several overlapping and confusing ways. Users replace most of the SolidWorks occurrences with words they use every day. The following list describes where SolidWorks and Microsoft users might encounter the word shortcut as a formal name for interface functionality, and how they might understand it.
• The Windows Shortcut link to another file or folder. Most users still refer to this link as a shortcut or desktop shortcut.
• Shortcuts (as identified in the SolidWorks Help under Shortcut⇒Keys) are either accelerator keys or keyboard shortcuts. Users refer to accelerator keys as Alt-keys, and to keyboard shortcuts as hotkeys.
• Shortcut menus are commonly called the right mouse button (RMB) menus, and have detached toolbars called context bars for both right- and left-click options. These are commonly known as the RMB bar and the LMB bar.
• Shortcut tabs (found as the “shortcut” entry in the SolidWorks Help) presumably refer to DriveWorksXpress functionality, although there is no direct mention of that in the Help entry. DriveWorksXpress is described in more detail in the SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible (Wiley, 2011).
• Shortcut bars are commonly known as the S key toolbar.
If you use the alternate terminology offered here, it will be clear to all users what you are talking about.
The Options dialog box (Tools⇒Customize⇒Options), shown in Figure 2.20, contains the Shortcut (RMB) menu and Menu customization options. These options enable you to show all the menu items for both types of menus in a single stroke. By default, some items are hidden in various menus. Keyboard customization is discussed later in this chapter. Keyboard shortcuts are generally referred to as hotkeys.
Changing