- [Instructor] In this movie, I'm gonna be showing you
how to customize the Sheet Metal Ribbon Bar.
Now you notice when you switch over to the Sheet Metal tab,
you notice we only have a couple different tools
that are available.
We can use the Base Flange/Tab tool or the Swept Flange,
or we have the ability to create a Formed tool.
So, before we can really get into using
any of these Sheet Metal tools,
we need to start a Sketch,
and then turn that Sketch into a Sheet Metal part,
and then we can start using
the rest of the Sheet Metal tools.
But once we have that available,
we can also modify the way these tools are laid out.
And we can do that by right-clicking
anywhere on any of these tabs.
Right-click over here,
and come down here to Customize CommandManager.
Click on that one, and you have this window that pops up.
And right over here you have these Shortcut Bars,
and you can add in and remove tools
from those Shortcut Bars right over here.
Notice these are the ones you see currently,
but you can go over and grab individual Sheet Metal tools
if you're using them quite a bit and drag them into here.
If you wanna go over to Commands,
notice over here we have one called Sheet Metal.
And here are our Sheet Metal tools,
and if you wanna add a new Sheet Metal tool
to this Ribbon Bar, you can just drag it up here.
So right up here you notice, we have this Corner Relief,
if you use that quite a bit,
you could drag this right up to that toolbar,
and it's gonna drop it right in.
You can also re-order things,
move this over here, move it back, it doesn't really matter,
you can add and modify,
any of the tools inside of this toolbar.
And in fact, you can add tools
that you don't actually have in that toolbar.
Lemme give you an example.
If you use the Sketch tools all of the time,
maybe you're using a CenterLine,
you can grab the CenterLine tool
and you can drag it into the Sheet Metal tab.
That's fine, you can mix and match any of the tools
on any of the toolbars.
So it makes it really handy.
You can also switch back to your other tabs, like Sketch.
For instance, I use that CenterLine tool all the time,
so I'd like to, instead of using the drop-down here,
and grabbing the CenterLine tool,
I wanna use it and put it right below the regular line tool.
Notice all the other tools automatically slide down,
and now we have access to that CenterLine tool
without having to use the drop-down.
So there's a whole bunch of things you can do
to customize your user experience.
Lemme show you a couple of other ones.
If you come over here to Keyboard,
I use the Normal To Command all the time.
So I'm gonna go ahead and search for that,
I'm gonna type in normal, N-O-R, there it is,
Normal To right here, and the automatic shortcut is Ctrl+8,
which is kind of a pain,
so I'm gonna go ahead and just say,
you know I'd like to also use the space bar.
And I'm adding in that space bar,
so anytime I wanna click Normal To a face,
hit the space bar and it'll automatically work,
so that makes it really easy.
You can also use mouse gestures with the Sheet Metal tools.
So if you find you're using a tool all the time,
you can search for that tool right over here under Search.
Let's say something like Flange.
Here it is, and then you can just drag that tool
directly into your Mouse Gestures over here,
notice it'll replace that one there,
and now we have a modified Mouse Gesture
for the part environment, adding that Base Flange tab.
Of course you can customize this as many times as you like,
and you can also switch from four gestures
to eight or even 12,
so you can have a whole bunch
of different tools available to you
right where your cursor happens to be on the screen.
All right, now let's go ahead and cancel out of this.
Close it down.
I'm gonna move it up, click OK.
And now we have a modified environment,
the next thing I wanna do
is show you how to load in a customized template.
So let's go up here to the gear icon.
Come over here to File Locations.
Under Default Templates,
go ahead and click on the Add button,
and then let's go ahead to the Desktop, Exercise Files,
and inside of there, you'll find a folder called Templates,
and let's go ahead and select that folder.
Now that'll show up as one of the tabs
when we start a brand new document,
and we can use some of the ones
that I've pre-formatted for this course.
Once that's added, go ahead and click on OK.
It might ask you if you wanna add that path,
click on Yes.
Give it a couple of Yes.
And then all of a sudden
we now have that path and that tab added
to when we start a new document.
As you can see, there's a lot of different ways
we can customize our user environment,
not just for the Sheet Metal tools
but for everything inside of SolidWorks,
and right now we're gonna be jumping in
and using those Sheet Metal tools,
so if you find something you're using all the time,
make sure you do customize your user environment
so you do have access to those tools as quickly as possible,
to improve your Sheet Metal working environment.