SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part I: SolidWorks Basics

FIGURE 2.10

The right-click context toolbar

An identical toolbar appears when you click an item on screen. When this toolbar appears with a

left-click, the rest of the RMB menu does not appear. Tool tips are available if you do not recognize

the icons on the toolbar.

For reference, the icons in the context toolbar atop the RMB menu (the icons without text) shown

in Figure 2.10 are in order from the upper-left: Edit Feature, Edit Sketch, Suppress, Rollback,

Select Other, Sketch, Hide Body, Zoom To Selection, Normal To, and Appearance Callout. Notice

that these selections do not reappear in the main RMB menu.

These context toolbars are not editable, but you can turn them off, and put the RMB menus back

to a familiar configuration. To deselect, click the context toolbar and choose Tools ➪ Customize.

Use the options on the right side of the main Toolbars tab, as shown in Figure 2.11.

I find that the RMB context toolbars are distracting because they force you to read a two-dimen-

sional list of icons and a one-dimensional list of text. To me, this is just too confusing. I turn these

off so that the RMB menus look like they always did.

However, I do find left-click context toolbars useful for things like Hide Sketch, Edit Feature, Edit

Sketch, Appearance Callout, sketch relations, and so on. When I use the RMB menus, I’m looking

for a more general function. When using the left-click context bars, I’m looking for something spe-

cific that I know is there. In Figure 2.11, the Show on selection check box option simply refers to

the left click toolbar, and Show in shortcut menu check box option refers to the RMB menu.