Wednesday February 26, 2014 at 2:00pm
Zoom to Selection
Time for little tip I showed in an Advanced Assembly training course last week that attendee’s seem to like; the little know ‘Zoom to Selection’ tool
It’s a great way to target your view in the graphical window right where you need to be, it works on a number of selectable items so let’s take a look;
When selecting something in SOLIDWORKS you often see the context toolbar appear, and on the bottom row of icons you’ll find the magnifying glass with an equal (=) symbol, this is the zoom to selection tool, below you can see I’ve selected a Face inside the graphical window then…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Once selected, the view zooms in to show the selected face…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
However where we see the biggest benefit of this tip is when using the feature tree to find things, so selecting a feature in the tree also brings up the context toolbar allowing us to show and zoom to the feature in the graphical window…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
It also works on components at the assembly level…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Give it a try!!
By Russell Richardson
Elite Applications Engineer