SolidWorks Tutorial 0: The SolidWorks User Interface
Introduction
SolidWorks is a very powerful CAD system, which is also to say that it can be very frustrating at times. This page summarizes some of the most important features of the user interface to help you learn to navigate through it.
Loading SolidWorks
In the past at AA, there have been some tricks. As of this writing, all of the earlier glitches with license management seem to have been solved and starting the application is quite easy.
Double-click on the 
SolidWorks 2024 icon on the desktop. It takes a minute or so to load, and then it will display a dialog box like the one shown below.
On the starting dialog there is a button that says "Log In." You can ignore this. IT is only if you have a Solidworks account on the cloud where you store your work. If you store your work remotely you can ignore the button. At AA it is best to have a USB flash drive for storing your work. This allows you to move from computer to computer and save and resume your project at different times.
If you are just modeling a single part, click on the button that says "Part" to create a new document for a single 3D part (i.e. not an assembly or a 2D drawing.)
Tool Bars
Rather than run down the complete set of toolbars, here is an example of one. You can explore the various instances for the different tools at your leisure.
This is the toolbar used for sketching. It will appear very frequently.
In the upper portion there are icons for the collection of tools available for sketching. Notice that the left-most button is selected, and it shows "Exit Sketch" which indicates that the sketching mode is active. To exit the sketching mode, you would click on that button.
Notice also that the button for sketching a rectangle is selected.
In the lower portion there is a set of tabs that shows the features that are available. Notice the the tab labeled "Sketch" is selected.
SolidWorks runs on PCs not Macs. You need to be handy with the standard three-button mouse on the PC. Further, you need a mouse in which the middle button is actually a wheel, not a button. This is shown below.
On the PC, the LEFT mouse button is used for selection.
The MIDDLE button (actually a wheel) is used to move the part rendering around in the graphical space. The wheel functions as BOTH a button and a track-wheel, so there is a lot you can do with it.
If you spin the wheel, that causes the image to zoom in and out.
If you click down on the wheel and drag the mouse, this causes the image to rotate in the window.
If you hold down the -CTRL- button, click down on the wheel and drag the mouse, it causes the part to pan around the screen rather than rotate.
There are a few other features too, but these should suffice for most users.
Tool Modes
When modeling a part in SolidWorks there are many different features that become active to perform the many different operations. These tend to be MODAL. This means that when one tool is active, it takes over the operation of the program so that the action is confined to the use of the tool.
Frequently you will find yourself trying to use some feature that doesn't seem to be working. Most likely it's because you are still within some active tool mode and you need to exit it before the application begins to cooperate again.
Here are a few methods:
Click on the (
) green check-mark or the red X to exit the tool
