How to personalize SOLIDWORKS with a Custom Tab

To each their own. Whatever floats your boat. These are the cliché quotes I think about when it comes to making personal settings inside of SOLIDWORKS. When I teach my go to statement is, “I’m going to show you several ways to do the same thing, find what works best for you and do it.” I find some users love short cuts like Ctrl + S to save and some like clicking the floppy disk to save. Some are mouse movers and like clicking items all over the screen while others use in-context commands.

Speed is a concern here but doing what works for you is as well. Personally I’m a hybrid of sorts. I use short cut keys and move my mouse rapidly all over. This article is going to show you how to place your everyday features in one tab to use. You probably know you can hide and show tabs on the CommandManager just by right clicking on them and selecting what you want. I do a bunch of sheet metal and body design so my Feature, Sketch, Sheet Metal, Evaluate tabs are all showing. I don’t do a lot of surfacing or renders so I hide the Surface and Render tools tabs.

SOLIDWORKS CommandManager Customize option

How to create a custom tab with all the tools you want

In the CommandManager bar at the top RMB (right mouse button) and choose Customize. The Customize menu comes up but what you want is to RMB the tabs.

The top says Add Tab, use the arrow to move to the next section and at the top is an Empty Tab.

Make sure to give your new tab a name right away.

Now that you have your empty tab it’s time to fill it up. While still in the Customize menu move to the Shortcut Bars or Commands tab. Here you will be able to find all the tools you need. To get the command in the tab just do the drag and drop function. If you are having problems finding the command under the right header you can still use the search in the top right of SOLIDWORKS and drag and drop from there.

If the command is grayed out in the search the drag and drop function still works

If you mistakenly placed an icon there you can RMB and select delete. If you want to divide commands you can RMB and select Begin A Group.

Another cool thing is you can add the same items with different configurations. For example I have Center Rectangle and Corner Rectangle or Line and Centerline.

Customized CommandManager Tab

For more information on customizing SOLIDWORKS to your liking check out Macros and assigning Shortcuts and SOLIDWORKS Hotkeys.