Thomas Bråthen
Technical Consultant
PLM Group, Oslo
Shortcut Bar is a custom toolbar that was originally introduced in SOLIDWORKS 2008. The purpose was to give users access to the most commonly used commands in the various 'environments' with as little mouse movement as possible.
The Shortcut Bar itself is therefore of older date. But we still meet a lot of users who do not know the simple trick that brings up the shortcuts right where you need them - Shortcut Bar appears right next to your cursor when you press the S key. And it disappears again as soon as you select a command from it, or if you click anywhere else in the window.
Let's look at how you can use the feature on a daily basis.
There are four versions of Shortcut Bar: Part, Assembly, Drawings and Sketch:
The shortcuts can be customized to match your routines: Right-click in the Shortcut Bar and select Customize.
Then select the Shortcut Bars tab, where you can customize the shortcuts just like in any other Tool Bars. The size of the popup box can also be changed here - just grab the edge of the box and drag and the size will change.
Shortcut Bar makes it possible to have access to many commands with very few mouse clicks, and at the same time you do not have to remember many different individual shortcut keys.
In fact, we meet a number of users who have adopted the Shortcut Bar as the primary method of accessing commands, and who have hidden the Command Manager and the usual toolbars to make a larger window work with their model.
If you combine the use of the S key and the D key with the diligent use of the right and left mouse keys, then you actually have almost no need to retrieve commands from any toolbar. You can easily work with a SOLIDWORKS view as below, and the movements with the mouse are greatly reduced.
Click on a surface and dimensions, breadcrumbs and command buttons will appear at the cursor.
Translated by Jan Egil Bæver
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