One command that is commonly involved in creating a sketch is the “Normal To” command. This changes the orientation of the model so that it is perpendicular with the selected face or plane. You may have noticed that this command is done automatically on the first sketch of every new part but from there the user is left to manually select the command for every subsequent sketch. In SolidWorks 2012 there is now an option to “Auto-rotate view normal to sketch plane on sketch creation”. It is under Tools > Options > Sketch > “Auto-rotate view normal to sketch plane on sketch creation”. This option will automatically rotate the model “Normal To” the face/plane selected when a sketch is created. This will eliminate the need to manually select the “Normal To” command when creating any sketches.
Reference the What’s New SolidWorks 2012 pdf for more details on this new functionality for 2012.
