Rotate about a selected edge, point, or vertices
by Keith Schaefer, Technical Analyst, CATI

 

I am sure that everyone has experienced this at one time or another.  You are zoomed in tight on a small detail of your model, and want to see it from a different angle.  You use your middle mouse button to rotate the part, and of course it rotates the part about the parts center.  Since I am zoomed in on one little detail, the portion of the part that you want to see goes flying off the screen. Now it’s just easier to zoom out, get your bearing, rotate the part, and zoom back in.

SolidWorks 2003 contained a tool for rotating about a selected edge, point, or vertices.  The problem was that most people either didn’t know that it was there, or found it too cumbersome to use. The tool involved selecting the rotate icon, and double clicking on the entity that you wanted to rotate about, and then moving the mouse to rotate the part.  It was slow, cumbersome, and required way too many picks.  Which is probably why most people didn’t use it. They found it easier to zoom out, rotate the part, and zoom back in.

In 2004 this tool has been changed.  The same rotate tool has been incorporated into the middle mouse button.  If you select a entity once with the middle mouse button on the edge or vertices that you want to rotate about, and then use the middle mouse button to rotate, SolidWorks will rotate the part about the selected entity.  In the case of a selected face it will rotate the part normal to the face at the point that you selected.

It’s a simple little trick to save a lot of time.