In a previous post I’d told you how to use the Shift key to quickly override the selection through transparency option, simply hold down the Shift key as you make your selection. Note that this option works both ways, to override when on and override when off.

I’m going to share some more tips for the Shift key and Ctrl key. I’d appreciate it if you would share others with me if you have more tips that you are aware of than those that I have posted here. I know there are may be a dozen others, but if some users suggest something that I think many users would take advantage of, I’ll update this post at another date with them.

When dragging a main drawing view to a different location on a sheet, you often times already have the child views positioned just where you want them relative to this main view. But if you drag the main view a little bit, the child views get screwed up. Simply hold the Shift key while dragging the main view and the child views will maintain their original position from the view being dragged.

When working in a model, holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the middle mouse button allows you to quickly pan your model.
When working in a model or a drawing, holding the Shift key and pressing the middle mouse button allows you to dynamically zoom in and out very quickly.

When working in a model, hold down the Shift key and press one of the four arrow keys if you want to rotate that model precisely 90 degrees.

When working in a sketch, sometimes you want to override the SolidWorks automatic relations and automatic inferencing setting that automatically make a sketch line vertical, or that automatically snaps to specific items such as endpoints or quadrants or circle centers. To do so, simply hold the Ctrl key down to override this automatic inferencing for that selection. Remove your finger from the Ctrl key and you’re back to automatic inferencing.

When selecting items in the feature manager tree, the Ctrl and Shift keys work exactly as they do in Windows Explorer.
Select multiple consecutive items by holding the Shift key while you select.
Select non-consecutive items by holding the Ctrl key while you select.
Remove specific individual items from your selection one at a time in the list by holding the Ctrl key and clicking that item.

You may be in a sketch and find that for whatever reason you want to have several identical circles in your model in some non-linear or non-cylindrical pattern. Simply hold the Ctrl key down while you click on the edge of a circle and copy it to multiple locations.

Now for the most obvious one that hopefully 99% of folks know about, but just in case, or for those 1% that don’t know this vital tip that everyone definitely needs to know and use:
When in a sketch, selecting on an endpoint of a line will bring up the PropertyManager. Holding down the Ctrl key and picking another endpoint of another line will add to this selection so that they are both selected and the PropertyManager will now show more options in the Add Relations box than you had when only a single entity was selected.

Start with a dumb imported model for example (or of course it could also be a solid model that you’ve create in SolidWorks with SolidWorks features in the tree), with a single 90° bend in it, regardless of where the coordinate system is positioned.

1. Rotate the model using the SolidWorks Move/Copy body feature to rotate the model so that the legs are at a 45° angle relative to the planes.
2. Now insert your split line by showing your temporary axis on the part (View, Temporary Axes) and selecting this temporary axis and one of the faces and Insert, Reference Geometry, Plane and put a plane at a 45 degree angle between these two selections so that it is splitting the radius in the middle. Then Insert, Curve, Split Line to split the face.
3. Then insert a Logopress3 Station Mark and name it “010—V-formed down” for example.
4. Then do a Logopress3 Unbending by steps to unbend one half of the bend, being careful to select nearest the split line for the first pick so that the split line is the purple edge in the Unbending by steps Property Manager.
5. After this is unbent, unbend the remaining 45 degree bend, again, being careful that the purple edge populated is the one that was the split line.
6. Now do a Move/Copy body to move the flattened part up to where you want die level to be.
7. Then insert another Station Mark and call this one 020—FLAT.

At that point you are ready to start Part preparation before strip starting. Note that if you envision what we just did, and slowly animate the unbending/the v-forming in your mind, the part is down and as it moves up towards die level the part gets unbent equally from both sides of the middle of the bend; precisely what you need for a v-form progressive die.

Create a sketch someplace on the part with that new sketch being on the plane of where you want the new XY plane to be. Draw one line whose endpoint is where you want the new origin of the part to be, and extend that line in the direction that you want for the positive X direction. Then draw another line perpendicular to the first one, with the start point where you want the new origin of the part, and draw this line in the positive Y direction. Then create a new origin on the part (Insert, Reference Geometry, Coordinate System…) by selecting the intersection point of where you want the new origin point and the correct X and Y lines for their desired direction.

Now start the process of saving the part as a Parasolid file, but before clicking Save, click on Options and then at the bottom of the Export Options window select the new coordinate system you just created from the Output coordinate system drop down list. Save the Parasolid file and then open the newly saved Parasolid file and your coordinate system is now in a logical place.

But this can be a pain to toggle on and off all the time. So two things:

1. Did you know that, because this is such an important option when designing with transparency that this is the one and only command on a Logopress3 toolbar or Command Manager that is not actually a Logopress3 command, but is simply a SolidWorks toggle? We put it there for your convenience. The icon for it looks like an isometric transparent box and is found about in the middle o f both the part and the assembly Logopress3 Command Manager tabs as well as in the middle of the Logopress3 Filter toolbar.
2. Now here’s the really interesting one that will benefit both Logopress3 users and non-users alike if you use transparency: To quickly override the selection through transparency option, simply hold down the Shift key as you make your selection. Note that this option works both ways, to override when on and override when off. So if you have it off/unchecked but you find you want to select through something, holding the Shift key down will allow you to. If you have it on/checked, you will be able to select the nearest thing to you as opposed to selecting through the model.

Today I am completely convinced that SSDs are definitely worth the extra money and the extra risk. That’s right, I said extra risk. While manufacturers of these devices would have you believe that since there are no moving parts, the failure rate is much lower than that of traditional platter HDDs. But that is simply not the case. Some brands are notably much more dependable than others. The good news is that when a SSD goes bad it usually goes bad within weeks of installation, and sometimes they are DOA (dead on arrival).

For those of you that I haven’t scared off yet, I can assure you that if you are looking at the bottom line and recognize that time is money, SSDs are very worthwhile, especially to the SolidWorks user. Boot times are dramatically quicker, as are file open times, save times, application load times, and the list goes on. Like any computer hardware, the quality and the brand is very important. It is important than you recognize that all SSDs are not created equal. OCZ drives have been historically bad, even though some magazine reviews give them rave reviews. I am convinced after all my reading and after owning a couple of them that they may be the worst – but there is no way I would have exchanged my experiences with them over the last couple years for platter drives.

I think that SSDs are very much like a front wheel drive car in Wisconsin. Once you’ve experienced driving in snow and ice with a front wheel drive car, you’d never consider going back to a rear wheel drive car. SSDs are the same and this is why, just as front wheel drives did, they are getting more and more popular as time goes on. Prices for the drives fall at a rate of about 50% per year. At the same time, performance is practically doubling every year. I’d encourage you to do some research and order your next computer with one, or, like I do, replace your existing drives with SSDs. There are drives with data transfer kits available that make the transition quite simple. For my money, at this point in time, the Crucial M4 drives are the SSD of choice. I’ll be ordering 4 of them for our training computers in the next few days and also a 512 GB SSD to replace my current 200 GB SSD in my laptop.

In all of our new computer recommendations to our customers, we recommend a high quality SSD drive for the boot drive in addition to a good platter drive for storage purposes. The platter drive can also be used for a backing up, but of course remember that an offsite backup is always important and always will be. (Of course “offsite” could mean “the cloud”.) Besides the benefit of significant speed increases in file related operations, you will have a cooler running computer as well as a completely quiet one from the drive standpoint. I definitely don’t miss the noise of a platter HDD spinning or the extra time spent waiting around for things to load and open and save…