Solidworks Display Plane in Drawing View

There are many unlike ways to dispense the model view in SolidWorks. This weblog post will endeavor to put about (all?) of the methods into one document for reference and draw a chip of history every bit to why some commands work equally they do. Mayhap yous will discover some methods you didn't know existed before.

Mouse Manipulation

This is perchance the most popular form of model view manipulation since it doesn't require you to motion your manus off of the mouse and in conjunction with a couple of keyboard "accelerators", can perform most of the common view manipulations. Here is an outline of all of the manipulations you can make with your mouse. This help topic as well outlines well-nigh of these methods pretty well.

Rotate View– middle mouse push drag. If the model is fully in view, SolidWorks rotates about the model centroid. If non, SolidWorks uses an algorithm to automatically select a piece of geometry that is in the view and projects a bespeak onto it to rotate about (the entity and rotation betoken are highlighted in magenta during the rotation). SolidWorks used to ever rotate most the model centroid regardless of whether the whole model was on the screen or not. For models that were off the screen, this often acquired to the model to rotate in a style that it would "fly off the screen". There used to be an selection in the View, Modify menu to always rotate about the screen center which some users preferred since it never had the problem of the model flying off the screen, only once we implemented this new behavior of automatically computing a rotation point for the "problem cases", the option was no longer required.

Rotate View well-nigh Entity – kickoff, single click on a piece of geometry (face, aeroplane, edge, vertex, sketch entity, etc.) with the middle mouse button and information technology volition highlight in magenta and show a rotate cursor with a green line through it (as shown below).

And so drag with the middle mouse button. It will rotate nigh that entity until you let become of the middle mouse push button then the entity is deselected. One limitation; this function does not work while editing a sketch. When describing this functionality, I've heard many people depict using double click to select the entity and rotate, but you don't have to try to fourth dimension this and then you select the entity and hold the mouse down on the second click (that is a hard manipulation for some to do). Simply single click the entity with the middle mouse button and then click and drag the middle mouse push anywhere on the screen as you commonly would to rotate; it is basically a select action followed by a rotate action (the select action is simply done with the middle mouse since you might also be in the procedure of doing a normal left mouse option set).

Roll View – Alt key and middle mouse button drag. This rotates the view parallel to the screen well-nigh the model centroid.

Pan – Ctrl key and middle mouse push drag. Notation that in drawings, you do not need to hold down the Ctrl key; both regular centre mouse push button drag and Ctrl centre mouse button elevate piece of work (since you lot can't rotate in drawings).

Zoom In/Out – Shift cardinal and centre mouse button elevate. If you have a wheel on your mouse (if not I highly recommend you become one with a wheel), so yous can zoom in/out with the mouse wheel.

Turn Camera – Ctrl-Alt keys and middle mouse push drag. This is only available when you lot are viewing a camera view and are either editing the view or take turned off "Lock camera position except when editing" in the photographic camera definition.

Related Settings – the following are a couple of useful settings to change the behavior of the mouse manipulation:

Zoom about screen center – under the View, Modify carte. Changes the behavior so that when using the mouse wheel, the view e'er zooms most the screen center (not many people want this, simply some do). The default behavior (with this selection off) is that when you lot zoom in with the mouse wheel, information technology takes the betoken that your mouse is over and zooms it towards the screen center. Once you get used to this, it works really well for zooming in on something that is not currently in the eye of the screen. Sometimes people ask why we didn't only go far zoom upwardly centered on the mouse location (instead of making it as well movement towards the heart of the screen). We found in both internal testing and with users that zooming about the verbal location of the mouse cursor more often caused the desired point of focus to wander off the screen when scrolling the cycle multiple clicks. The beliefs nosotros have now works very well. Notation that regardless of this setting, zooming out ever zooms out about the screen center (once again, we found in testing this was the best behavior).

Reverse mouse wheel zoom direction– under Tools, Options, System Options, View. By default, scrolling the wheel forward towards the screen (or "up") zooms out (like you are pushing the model with the wheel away from the screen) and scrolling it towards yous (or "downwards") zooms in like you are pulling the model towards you). Some people like to reverse this beliefs if they are used to some other system that does it in the reverse manner and especially if they are switching betwixt the different systems oft.

Mouse speed – under Tools, Options, System Options, View, View rotation. Defines the speed at which the view rotates for Rotate View, Rotate View almost Entity, Roll View, and Plough Camera.

Keyboard Manipulation

The post-obit are default keyboard shortcuts in the SolidWorks installation for manipulating the views.

Spacebar–brings up the view orientation dialog for choosing standard views, saving/recalling user divers views, and irresolute the standard view definitions (i.e. switching all the orthogonal views so for example front is top, bottom is forepart, etc.) This last functionality is very useful if you are used to a coordinate system that has Z pointing up instead of Y pointing upwards.

F – Zoom to Fit

Z – Zoom Out

Shift+Z – Zoom In

Ctrl+1 thru Ctrl+7 – These office keys are divers equally the standard orthogonal views as follows: Front, Dorsum, Left, Right, Top, Lesser, and Isometric

Ctrl+8 – Normal To (see below for more details about the Normal To function).

Ctrl+Shift+Z – Previous View. This is like Undo, but for undo of view manipulation instead of entity/feature creation/edit.

Pointer Keys (Up, Downwardly, Left, Right)– Rotates the view past a predefined increase, about the model centroid, around the screen's horizontal or vertical axis (see Related Settings beneath).

Shift+Pointer Keys (Up, Down, Left, Right)– Rotates the view 90 degrees, nearly the model centroid, around the screen's horizontal or vertical centrality.

Ctrl+Arrow Keys (Upwards, Down, Left, Correct) – Pans the model.

Alt+Pointer Keys (Left, Right)– Roll View – Rotates the view by a predefined increment, virtually the model centroid, parallel to the screen (see Related Settings beneath).

Thou – brings upwards a magnifying drinking glass that tin be used to more easily brand selections or to inspect portions of the model without having to modify the overall view calibration.

Ctrl+R– Redraws the screen. This used to exist required a lot in the early days of SolidWorks when we used to have a lot of what we called "screen poo", but I never apply it anymore. Due to improvements in the SolidWorks algorithms over the years, the graphics always seem to be up to engagement now. We used to accept a button on the toolbars by default for this also, simply once again, information technology is not required then it is non visible past default.

Related Settings – the following are a couple of useful settings to change the behavior of keyboard view manipulation.

Arrow keys – under Tools, Options, System Options, View, View rotation. Defines the angle increment used for the Arrow Central and Alt+Arrow Key view rotation.

Zoom to fit when changing to standard views – under Tools, Options, Arrangement Options, View. Defines whether or not a zoom to fit operation is performed whatever fourth dimension you switch to ane of the standard views.

View transitions – under Tools, Options, Organization Options, View, Transitions. Defines whether or not the view animates to the new orientation when choosing a standard view or to view Normal to. If turned on, controls the speed of the animation. The animation is frequently useful, peculiarly when looking normal to an entity so you lot don't "lose runway" of the orientation of your model.

Reference Triad

Prior to SolidWorks 2009, the Reference Triad in the bottom left corner of the graphics area as shown in the image below was truly there only for orientation reference.

Starting with SolidWorks 2009, the Reference Triad tin can now be used to dispense the view. The following manipulations tin can be made with the triad.

Select Axis – Click on an axis to look along that axis. This is equivalent to selecting a standard orthogonal view, but without making the mental mapping in your head every bit to which view is which related to your model. Note that if you are already looking normal to one of the orthogonal views, you can reverse the direction (for case from front view to back view or vice versa) by clicking the centrality that is currently pointing at or abroad from you lot (for instance, the Z axis on the triad equally shown in the two orientations below).

Alt+Select Axis – Rotates the view virtually the arrow by a predefined increment. This uses the aforementioned bending increment as Tools, Options, System Options, View, View rotation, Arrow Keys.

Ctrl+Alt+Select Axis – Rotates the view about the arrow by a predefined increase in the opposite direction as Alt+Select Axis.

Shift+Select Axis – Rotates the view nearly the pointer by 90 degrees.

Ctrl+Shift+Select Axis – Rotates the view almost the arrow past 90 degrees in the opposite direction every bit Shift+Select Axis.

Mouse Gestures

Introduced in SolidWorks 2010, this is a quick interface for executing commands by merely dragging the mouse while holding the right mouse button. While this is fully customizable, by default, in a office and assembly manner, the mouse gestures are fix upwardly to switch to the standard orthogonal views. I won't get into any particular here simply will talk about mouse gestures in a future postal service. The detailed help on mouse gestures is available here.

View Related Toolbar Buttons

Most of the functions I have mentioned so far and quite a few more are available on toolbars (either by default or tin exist customized on). You tin can either put viewing buttons on the Heads-Up View Toolbar, Regular Toolbars, the Bill of fare Bar, or the CommandManager. Almost of the view related toolbar buttons are located in Tools, Customize, Commands, View. In many cases, information technology is quicker to use the mouse or keyboard shortcuts for the viewing functions so the toolbars aren't used as often. The exception may exist if you are using a laptop without a mouse or a tablet PC where the buttons can exist very useful. Some of these toolbar buttons that are commonly used for selections such as Normal To and Zoom to Selection are also available on appropriate Context Toolbars.

Normal To

The Normal To function allows yous to change the view to be looking normal to various geometry. The documentation for this functionality is here. The following behaviors are supported:

• In an active sketch, only nothing selected -> views normal to the sketch (squares it up on the screen)
• Select a characteristic defined by a single sketch -> views normal to the sketch that defines the feature
• Select a planar face or airplane -> views normal to the planar face up or aeroplane
• Select a cylindrical or conical face -> views along the centrality of the face up
• Afterwards one of the commencement selections above, brand a second selection of a planar confront or airplane with Ctrl+select then use Normal To will orient the model and then the 2d planar face is pointing up in the view. Without a 2d pick, the rotational orientation of Normal To is divers by the "natural management" of the selected object. This "natural direction" is the aforementioned as where the Y axis of a sketch would indicate if you were to sketch on that selection and in almost cases, relates to the global coordinate system of the part. Most users use Normal To with a single selection and and then use Alt+arrow keys to rotate the view into a desired orientation if necessary.
• After choosing Normal To for any of the higher up, selecting Normal To once again volition flip the view 180 degrees (looking at the back of a selected face or airplane for example)
• Prior to SolidWorks 2010, if yous were not in a sketch and didn't pre-select a piece of geometry earlier selecting Normal To, SolidWorks would prompt for a piece of geometry to look Normal To. Starting with SolidWorks 2010, if you are not in a sketch and accept nothing selected, Normal To volition switch to the closest orthogonal view orientation. This is a very quick way to "square up" the view and 1 of my favorite little shortcuts added to SolidWorks 2010. This new behavior is documented here.

Hopefully I documented most of the default means that you tin can manipulate the model view in SolidWorks. Of course, you can become additional hardware that can also dispense the model and tin increase your productivity even more. If I have missed any common ways to manipulate the model view, please comment and I will update the blog mail.

Relish,
Wilkie

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Jim is Vice President, User Experience Compages at Dassault Systemès SolidWorks Corporation

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Source: https://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/2009/11/how-do-i-manipulate-my-model-view-let-me-count-the-ways.html

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