July 7th, 2008 | 
Author: I know this little piece of information is extremely basic for those with lots more experience in SolidWorks, but believe me, I just found out about this one while working my way through the SolidWorks Drawings training manual. Well, you know there are multiple views you can choose from to display your part or assembly, right? You have top, bottom, right, left, isometric, trimetric, etc. Did you know you can also create and name your own custom views? I kind of suspected this was possible, because I had seen some parts used in other manuals that had views you don’t usually find available in the toolbar, like Reverse Isometric and such, but until now I had no idea how to do it. Well, it’s very simple, all you need to do is position your part and assembly just the way you want it or need it to be for your custom view by using Shift and the arrows, dragging it around with your mouse, using Roll, Rotate or whatever way works best for you, then click on View, Modify, Orientation to display a little menu of views (Note: you can also use Spacebar to get to the same menu).
From the menu, choose New View (second icon from left to right).
Type the name you wish to give to your new custom view.
And that’s it! Your new custom view will be available for you next time you need it and it will save you the work of dragging and rotating the part or assembly to achieve that particular orientation again.
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I love all the great SolidWorks information. Your blog has been a welcome resource for a new solidworks user!
I came across this post today, and was curious about other view functions. As a former user of Unigraphics, I’ve been accustomed to using a feature that would rotate the model to the nearest orthographic plane, without zooming. Another was the ability to select a face or plane and have the model rotate to ‘look at’ that plane, again without zoom. Are there any features in SolidWorks that will allow those functions? Thanks for any help you can suggest.
I was trying different things searching for an answer to this one. So, upto 2008, you can certainly reorient your model by selecting any plane or face and clicking on “normal to” among the options, but it always zooms the view so your model occupies the whole area. In 2009 you can switch your view to any of the different orthographic planes (front, right, left, top, bottom, etc) by clicking on the axes X,Y or Z in that colorful origin that always appears on the bottom left of the graphics area. This orients the view, but doesn’t zoom it.