Customize Your Mouse Buttons in SOLIDWORKS

A very powerful tool in SOLIDWORKS which can easily be customized is Mouse Gestures. Mouse Gestures provide shortcuts for up to 12 customizable commands using only a single right-click and drag motion. The gesture can be accessed by right-clicking anywhere in your workspace and then dragging the mouse towards a command on the wheel that pops up. Whether you are in a sketch, part, assembly or drawing, the wheel can be customized for each of the four workspaces.

Accessing Mouse Gesture

To access your Mouse Gestures, first, go to the Tools tab of the command ribbon and select Customize. From there, select the Mouse Gestures tab, which is shown below.

Next, you can enable/disable Mouse Gestures, choose the number of gestures from 2-12 and assign commands to spots on the Mouse Gesture Guide. To add a command to the gesture wheel, simply drag it from the Command list onto the spot on the wheel where you want it. The default Mouse Gestures are shown above. As an example of how these gestures would be used, if you were in a sketch and wanted to quickly access the line tool, all you would have to do is right-click and drag the mouse horizontally to the left.

>> Click here to watch our Video Tech Tip, Introduction to Mouse Gestures

Another mouse setting which can be customized in SOLIDWORKS is the zoom direction. By default, the view will zoom in when the mouse wheel is rolled backward (towards you) and will zoom out when the wheel is rolled forward (away from you). To reverse these commands, first open System Options and chose View from the list on the left side. Then, check the box which says “Reverse mouse wheel zoom direction” as shown on the next image.

Want to learn more advanced SOLIDWORKS functions? Check out our training schedule for SOLIDWORKS classes near you.