SOLIDWORKS Electrical Interface Customization

SOLIDWORKS Electrical Interface Customization

When using SOLIDWORKS Electrical, it may not be immediately obvious how much you can actually customize the interface. In this blog we will have a quick look at the various ways you can customize SOLIDWORKS Electrical to make you more productive.

Hide unused menus: In the View tab of the ribbon, you can customize which menus you have access to on the left and right side of the screen. However you may also notice that you can pin or unpin the remaining tabs:

You can unpin the menus to make them automatically hide when you don’t need them. This gives you more screen real-estate when working on your drawings. Now you may find this frustrating at first, but you should find that if you make use of the right click ‘go-to’ menus and page navigation hotkeys (discussed shortly) you will find you don’t need to continually drag your cursor to these menus, saving you time in screen travel.

Configure Graphics Options: For users who have made the leap from AutoCAD to SOLIDWORKS Electrical, you may find it easier to change the interface to make it similar to AutoCAD. This can be done quite easily by going to Tools > interface Configuration > Graphic Options

Here we get a couple of options, for example we can change the zoom direction of the mouse wheel to align with what you are used to in AutoCAD.

You can also change the drawing background colour and styles to some pre-sets which may be easier on your eyes.

Quick Access Toolbar: Most SOLIDWORKS Electrical users would be familiar with the Quick Access Toolbar. There is actually a button at the end of it that lets you customize it. And at the bottom of this menu is an additional hidden dialog “More Commands”.

This dialog has some nice features that are hidden away. You can quickly customize the Quick Access Toolbar with any command you wish here, re-order, remove commands etc. You can also set it to appear below the Ribbon to mean you have to move your cursor less distance to reach it.

Keyboard tab:  This tab lets you set and customize keyboard shortcuts. If you wish to reduce the amount of time you spend dragging the cursor around the screen, you can set some shortcuts/hotkeys here to aid in navigation and using frequented commands.

These are just a few tips that will help you improve your productivity with SOLIDWORKS Electrical.

About the Author:
Logan Pegler, Technical Support Engineer
CSWE
Based in Auckland, New Zealand