Put Your Extra Mouse Buttons to Use in SOLIDWORKS!

This article focuses on using a non-traditional way to assign hotkeys to your SOLIDWORKS session: Using your extra mouse buttons. SOLIDWORKS is designed to assign as hotkeys keyboard strokes and mouse gestures.

The most important aspects of a design are speed, accuracy, and quality. SOLIDWORKS offers a variety of ways to shortcut your design efforts, making it comfortable for you by decreasing the number of clicks and menu engagements and screen-space navigation.

To find your custom button assignments in SOLIDWORKS, go to the “Customize” Menu under Settings:

The Customize Menu Item

On the Keyboard tab or Mouse Gesture tabs, you will find the customization properties for the command you want to use:

Keyboard Tab in the Customize Menu in SOLIDWORKS

The following image is a snapshot of the Logitech Software detecting the mouse we are using as well as the available buttons for us to customize. We will focus on customizing the side buttons for now.

Logitech Software: Indicating available buttons to assign

We will make use of our extra mouse buttons, as the ones shown in the previous picture. In this case we are using a Logitech Wireless Mouse M510. Logitech offers a software that detects the type of mouse you are using and gives you the ability to customize your key assignments:

Logitech Software: Assigning a keystroke “S” to the lower side button

The example in the image above assigns the key “S” to the lower side button which means whenever the lower side button is pressed in ANY active windows environment, it will be equivalent to pressing the S button on our keyboard. Searching for the “shortcut bar” in the Keyboard tab below, we assign the shortcut to “S”.

Shortcut bar assigned the letter “S” in the keyboard

Shortcut Bar when clicking the extra mouse button in SOLIDWORKS

Additionally, allocating the upper side button (“Alt + F1”) in the Logitech software and also in SOLIDWORKS for the “Smart Dimension” command will give you a quick access. Of course, this can be changed to any commonly used or desired command. (Measure, Rebuild, Isometric view etc.)

Logitech Software: Assigned ALT + F1 for the upper side button

Smart Dimension is now assigned the key stroke “Alt + F1” equivalent to the upper side button of the mouse

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