SOLIDWORKS Design Approach · Part 03
Most of the time lost in a CAD system is lost to configuration that was never done. Ten minutes spent on options and templates at the start of a project returns more than any keyboard shortcut ever will.
Orientation
The main window divides into three areas, and the division reflects a real separation of concerns rather than a layout preference.
The bar along the bottom of the window reports on your current activity — sketch status, selected entity, current operation, units. It is the cheapest diagnostic in the interface and the most consistently ignored. Make reading it a habit early; it will tell you a sketch is under-defined long before a feature fails because of it.
A line at the bottom of the tree can be dragged upward to roll the model back through its own construction history, temporarily hiding the features below the line. This is the primary tool for reverse-engineering an unfamiliar model, investigating why a feature behaves as it does, and debugging a failed rebuild by isolating the step at which the failure begins.
Two related rules govern deletion, and both surprise newcomers. Deleting a feature does not delete its sketch — the sketch remains and can be reused. Conversely, a sketch cannot be deleted while a feature still consumes it; the feature must go first.
Modes
The system presents different command sets depending on what you are doing. Three modes are basic — part, assembly and drawing — and correspond to the three document types introduced in Part 01. Additional modes appear as capabilities are added: simulation, animation, analysis and machining among them.
The practical consequence is that a command you cannot find is frequently a command that belongs to a mode you are not in. Annotation tools appear in drawing mode; mates appear in assembly mode; sketch relations appear only while a sketch is open. Recognising this converts a large class of frustration into a one-second diagnosis.
Configuration
The single most important distinction in the entire settings dialogue, and the one that causes the most confusion.
Configure the installation. Changes affect the current document and every future document, and they follow the machine rather than the file. Snap behaviour, display style, colours, file locations, performance and backup settings live here.
Because they are machine-level, system options do not travel with a model. Two designers on the same project can have materially different system settings and neither will know.
Configure the current document only. Units, dimensioning standard, annotation and dimension styles, grid and snap settings, image quality, material properties and drafting standard live here.
Because they are document-level, they travel with the file — and because they are document-level, setting them on one part does nothing for the next one. That is exactly the problem templates solve.
Units are a document property. Opening a model created elsewhere and reading a dimension without checking the unit system is a reliable way to be wrong by a factor of 25.4. Check the status bar or the document properties before interpreting any number in an unfamiliar file, and set the unit system in your templates so that new documents never inherit a default you did not choose.
The leverage point
Templates — also called start parts or master parts — are the mechanism that makes document-level configuration durable. A template is created like any other file and saved in the template format, after which it becomes available whenever a new document is started.
What a template can carry is broader than most people use:
Tools, options and document properties, already configured: units, decimal places, drafting standard, dimension and annotation styles.
Favoured base stock — geometry and features that every part of a given family starts from.
Commonly used planes, axes and coordinate systems, present from the first click.
Preferred tolerance formats, hole callout styles and surface finish symbols, so that formatting is a selection rather than a construction.
Preset views, standard notes, layers and the sheet format with its title block and projection symbol.
A default material, and the custom property fields that feed the title block and bill of materials.
Separate templates are normally maintained for parts, assemblies and drawings. Where a team shares work, templates belong on a network location rather than on individual machines — a template that exists on one designer's computer is a personal preference, not a standard.
Almost every complaint about inconsistent drawings across a design office traces back to templates: either none exist, or several do. Fixing the template fixes every future drawing at once. Fixing the drawings one at a time fixes nothing.
Speed
A productivity tool is any operation or function that shortens the path to a completed task. They are diverse and mostly unglamorous.
| Mechanism | What it does | Where the saving comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Customisation | Menus, toolbars and command groups can be reorganised, and individual menu items switched on or off. | Removing commands you never use shortens every search through the ones you do. |
| Hotkeys | Keystrokes bound to commands, following the usual conventions for save and print and extending to modelling operations. | Learned incidentally alongside the commands themselves; the shortcut is displayed beside each menu item. |
| Programmable mouse | Multi-button mouse with buttons bound to a command or a sequence of commands. | Faster than a keyboard reach for many people, and keeps the hand on the pointing device. |
| Templates | Pre-configured start documents. | Eliminates per-document setup entirely. |
| Layers | Grouped display and print control, principally in drawings. | Turning a class of annotation on or off in one action. |
| Macros | Recorded or written command sequences. Covered in Part 07. | Repetitive operations executed identically every time. |
| Families of parts and libraries | Configurations, design tables and reusable library features. Covered in Part 07. | Never modelling the same geometry twice. |
Display
A model can be viewed from any angle during construction — the standard views being front, top, right and isometric, with back, bottom and left also available. But viewing and creating are two separate activities. Viewing is controlled by the orientation you select; construction is controlled by the active sketch plane.
Although the model may be viewed from any angle while building it, the practical convention is to view perpendicular to the active sketch plane. That alignment puts the sketch plane parallel to the screen, which is the only orientation in which sketch entities can be judged accurately as they are created.
Wireframe, hidden lines visible, hidden lines removed, shaded, and shaded with edges. Each answers a different question: wireframe for interior geometry, shaded with edges for general work, hidden lines removed for checking a profile against a drawing view.
Temporary section views cut the model on screen without modifying it, which is the fastest way to inspect internal geometry, wall thickness and clearance during modelling.
Support
Two practical constraints govern installation. The software is a native Windows application: running it on other operating systems requires either a dual-boot arrangement or virtualisation software, and virtualisation carries a performance penalty that matters for large assemblies. And the machine specification — memory, storage and a supported graphics adapter — should be checked against the vendor's published system requirements before purchase rather than after.
Beyond the built-in help, the wider resource set includes the vendor's own documentation and forums, community user groups and blogs, third-party training providers, and shared model libraries carrying parts, assemblies and macros contributed by manufacturers and users. Free viewer and markup applications also exist, which matter more than they first appear — they let a design be sent to someone without a licence, reviewed, marked up and returned. That capability is the subject of Part 16.
The ordering that works: set system options for the machine, build or update the templates, confirm units and drafting standard in the templates, place shared templates and libraries on the network, and only then start modelling. Every one of those steps is cheap before there are files and expensive after.
Series
The SOLIDWORKS Design Approach series works through computer aided design as an engineering discipline, from first principles to manufacture.
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