To many who’ve used SolidWorks prior to the release of SolidWork 2008 the user interface was very good. So how in SolidWorks 2008 could they improve the interface? By bringing the tools
you use right to your cursor so you’re not searching around the screen for things.  What if I
don’t want to use these new items? If you like the old way better you can still use it that way,
see the last page.

Command Manager:
This tool bar option has been around since SolidWorks 2004. It allows you to have a single toolbar that will display different toolbars in the same place depending on what group of icons you need. Prior to this you would most likely have had many toolbars displayed around the screen all the time. These individual toolbars are still available and can still be used with or without the Command Manager being used.

Make your own Command Manager Toolbars: You can now create your own toolbar(s)/tab(s) as you’d like to see them. These custom toolbars are then captured by the Copy Settings Wizard
for easy setup for other users or on other machines.

Try it out:
(1)Right click on one of the tabs in your Command Manager and select
(2)Customize Command Manager.
(3)Now you’ll notice a new tab, this is key. If you left click on it, you’ll see a list of all the SolidWorks toolbars and you can turn on any of these for use in the Command Manager.
(4)The very top of this list allows you to create an empty tab or toolbar.
(4)Selecting this will then allow you to
(5)type in a name of your choosing.  When the Customize window is still up and you can select on its Commands tab to find icons to (6) drag and drop onto your new toolbar and you’ll need at least on icon on your toolbar to make it
functional.
(7) You can also reorder the tabs, you can left click and drag and drop the tab to a new
location of your choice.
 Note: The Customize window still needs to be up to reorder the tabs.

 

Shortcut Bars:  
These new toolbars bring the tools you want to your cursor faster than ever, as soon as you press the “S” key these Shortcut bars come up.

These toolbars are customizable, simply right click on them and select customize and you can drag and drop icons to and from the toolbar and the customize window.

With the customize window up you can resize these toolbars to be either single rows or multi column/row boxes.

These toolbars will allow you, with a single common keystroke, bring all the functions of
SolidWorks to your cursor so you can keep the focus on design rather than looking around for tools.
 

Context Bars:
When you select (left mouse button) things in the Feature Manager or Graphics area these toolbars bring context specific tools to your cursor. These toolbars appear in assemblies, parts or sketches. These items are a subset of the full context sensitive menus you’ll find when you right click on the same items. This right click menu will have this same context bar at the very top of the menu.

Currently these toolbars are not customizable.

Heads-up View Tools:
This is the transparent toolbar at the top of the graphics area. It contains view level tools and can be customized to the users liking from a specific list of optional items to show/hide. Simply right click on any of the items in the row to show the list of items that can be shown or hidden.

Settings to turn off the new functionality.
For you old school SolidWorks veterans I know you want to get things back the way they
were as fast as possible, so I’ll point that out here. I would certainly recommend you review
the rest of the article and see if you might agree with some of the benefits of these changes.

Instant 3D:  Solid/Transparent Yellow Feature While Editing a Sketch

This is the thing that causes there to be a yellow shaded preview of the feature while you’re in
edit sketch mode of that existing feature. Previously SolidWorks has never been able to show
you the preview of an existing feature while in edit sketch mode and now that shaded preview sometimes gets in the way of understanding what 2D data you’re working with and revising.

To shut this off; on the Features Toolbar there is an icon called Instant 3D and it’s a toggle. If
" you toggle it off the yellow preview will go away. You should see this in either the Command Manager Features Toolbar or the Non-Command Manager Features Toolbar as well. If you’ve already customized and removed it from you toolbar you’ll need to add it back to the toolbar in order to toggle it off/on.

Right Click Menu: Icon bar at the top/Insert Sketch is gone?

SolidWorks moved the most familiar and commonly used commands to the Icon bar at the top.
So it appears to have removed them from the list because we don’t see their respective text descriptions.

To get this back in the list; Tools, Customize, Context toolbar settings, Uncheck: Show in
shortcut menu.

SolidWorks has brought common commands to your screen by selecting things, like a model face.

To get this to go away; Tools, Customize, Context toolbar settings, Uncheck: Show on selection.