SOLIDWORKS Add-In Glossary and Tips

This page contains general tips for usage of CustomTools and terminology used in the products and their user interfaces and helps.

CustomTools commands usage:

The CustomTools Copy command affects always to the active document.

Document type specific CustomTools commands are also listed in the right-click menu based on type of the selected component.

When performing any of the following CustomTools commands, all CustomTools commands except the Customize menu command in the CustomTools menu gets disabled until you finish the ongoing CustomTools operation:

Properties
PrintAndConvert
CoBox
Data
Comment
Notes

After the command has been executed or the user cancels the command execution by any reason, the CustomTools commands becomes enabled again.

Tips for the daily usage:

Anytime you want to use the CustomTools Search feature, click the CTIcon tab in the SOLIDWORKS Task pane.

When saving document and the default saving folder is not defined, the save folder opened by default by the Save As dialog box is the folder you saved the most recent file within the same SOLIDWORKS session.

TIP: The SOLIDWORKS session ends when you close the SOLIDWORKS.

Side panes associated to CustomTools features have an auto complete feature that remember the user inputs in several text boxes. Auto complete suggests the recently typed values based on the value that the user is typing.
Tabs in the Options are shown based on the user rights. So if you do not see some specific options tab please contact your CustomTools administrator to get further information about your CustomTools environment related user right policies.
When saving the new files, the file name should not contain any of the following characters:

\, /, *, ?, ", <, >, |

Sheet Metal:

When you create a multibody part from several sheet metal components, the thicknesses of the components are written to cut-list-item properties of each cut-list-item as a property called Thickness.

File Conversion:

When you convert your SOLIDWORKS drawings to the JPEG format, the drawings are zoomed to fit the screen before they are converted to ensure that the output files can be used as planned.

Save file dialogs:

Recent Places (Windows 7 and newer). Shows the most recently used folders.

Migration from older CustomTools versions:

When you import a CustomTools profile that has been created with CustomTools 2010 version for example, the options of the new features of the new CustomTools version are setup based on the default settings of those features.

For example, settings of the following features are setup by the default options on migration from the older CustomTools version:

CoBox	The CoBox feature was introduced in CustomTools 2012 SP0 version.
CNCTool	The CNCTool feature was introduced in CustomTools 2012 SP1 version.
Cut List Properties	CustomProperties for the Cut-list items (Cut List Properties) was introduced in CustomTools 2010 SP5. When you import a CustomTools profile that has been created with an older CustomTools version than CustomTools 2010 SP5, any Cut List Properties are not included in the imported profile so in that case the users have to create those properties by themself.