The Ultimate Guide to SOLIDWORKS Keyboard Shortcuts & Controls

View & Display Controls

The most frequent actions in 3D CAD are view manipulations like rotating, panning, and zooming your models.

While you can do this with a mouse, using shortcuts like "Ctrl + number keys" to snap your view normal to a specific face, or "Alt + arrow keys" to rotate a model by 90 degrees, will speed up your navigation far more than mouse clicks ever could.

The Magnifying Glass tool ("G" key) is also incredibly handy, so make sure to learn that one early on.

Sketching Operations

These shortcuts are for drawing the 2D sketches that form the foundation of your 3D models.

Working in SOLIDWORKS is a constant cycle of drawing 2D planar sketches and turning them into 3D features. Once you handle this via the keyboard, you can instantly toggle between sketch mode and feature creation without wasting time moving your mouse around.

These are the absolute basics, so mastering them is a must.

Selection & Modeling Controls

Next up are the keys for precisely selecting and modeling specific entities (faces, edges, and vertices) in 3D space, which is critical for detailed editing.

"Ctrl + Left Click" for selecting multiple faces or edges at once, and "Shift + Left Click" for range selection in the FeatureManager design tree (or for grabbing a transparent face in the foreground instead of the solid face behind it) are fundamental, must-know modeling maneuvers.

On top of that, you can drastically cut down on mouse travel between the graphics area and the feature tree by utilizing the "A" key to quickly toggle object types mid-command, "Shift + R" to toggle the display of geometric relations when the screen gets cluttered, and "Alt + Left Click" to show a hidden body when hovering over it.

At first, you’ll need to consciously visualize the structure as you use these, but by gradually replacing menu clicks with keyboard shortcuts—starting with your most used tools—you'll definitely see a massive boost in your modeling speed.

Assembly Operations

Moving on to assembly shortcuts. Actions like hovering over a part to toggle its visibility with "Tab / Shift + Tab," or duplicating a component with "Ctrl + Left Drag," are insanely useful when designing assemblies where you're bringing multiple parts together into a finished product.

General & File Operations

Basic actions like creating a new file, saving, printing, cutting, and pasting use the standard OS shortcuts you already know.

But if there's one shortcut that will make or break your SOLIDWORKS efficiency, it's the "S" key—you absolutely need to master it.

Pressing "S" instantly pops up the Shortcut Bar right next to your mouse pointer. Better yet, the tools displayed automatically adapt based on your current working environment (part, assembly, drawing, or sketch), saving you the massive headache of digging through menus to find what you need among SOLIDWORKS' massive toolset.