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Selecting background options wisely

You should avoid some colors for the background, or you should make some changes if you choose these colors. Black is used with fully defined sketches, dimensions, FeatureManager text, and annotations. Blue can mask the underdefined sketch color. Bright green (or blue, depending on the version you are using) can cause problems with seeing selected items. Bright red, aside from being a terrible color to stare at all day, also does not contrast well with some of the red highlights and error colors.

You might think that no matter which color background you select, aside from the default, the items or features are difficult to see. For this reason, many users choose a gradient background, which enables them to pick colors where items are always visible on one-half of the screen or the other. Staring at a white screen all day can be uncomfortable for your eyes, so pick colors that enable you to see everything with “reasonable” contrast, yet are not glaringly bright. Very high contrast is hard on the eyes, and low contrast may make it difficult to distinguish items on the screen.

You have to consider what the purpose of the background is. Some people doing presentations may want the background to be attractive while otherwise staying out of the way. Others may only need the background to contrast with whatever is in front of it in a way that does not strain anyone's eyes. For writing a book, the background generally needs to be white to match the page. No one scheme will suit all needs.

In addition to colors and gradients, you can use an image as the graphics window background. This gives you a wider range of customization capabilities, and several sample images are already available in the default settings. Also, be aware that document scene backgrounds are document specific and override system options.

RealView also adds some capabilities with scenes. Scenes can be applied from the Appearances, Scenes, and Decals tab on the Task pane. Most of the display settings work in conjunction with RealView, which is an advanced display mode. Depending on your graphics card, your computer may or may not be capable of using RealView. SolidWorks offers three different types of scenes: Basic, Studio, and Presentation. Of these, I find the Studio scenes to be the best when I need a reflective floor with shadows; otherwise, I stick with the Basic scenes. I find it distracting to use either reflections or shadows in models while working. However, a nice, shiny RealView appearance to the part is often useful, especially for visualizing curvature on curvy parts. I describe RealView, along with scenes, in more detail in Chapter 5.

Customizing strategies

You can easily customize many aspects of the SolidWorks interface, including:

• Toolbars

• Menus

• Background colors or images

• PropertyManager skins

• Task pane location

• Hotkeys

• Macros

• Custom application programming

Whether or not you should customize each of the previous items depends partially on how much time and energy you have to spend, how much you work with others, whether you share your workstation with other users, and how much money you are ready to dedicate in the case of custom programming.

Considering hotkey approaches

Some of us old-timers prefer to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. If your hand-eye coordination is as bad as mine is, you may also choose this approach. I can type without looking at the keyboard, but when I use the mouse, it takes me a few seconds to aim at an icon and hit it accurately. This means that I customize SolidWorks to use as many hotkeys as possible, and remove icons from the interface if I have them on hotkeys. Unfortunately, my memory is as bad as my eyesight, and so remembering 75 hotkey commands is a bit of a problem. I admit to having a printed list of hotkeys taped to the side of my monitor. While I know that needing to read the list to find a particular hotkey defeats most of the purpose of using them in the first place, I just