I am sure that I am asking this question wrong (and probably why I can't find any answers), but what I am looking for is some key or mouse stroke to get out of a current command without completely exiting whatever tool you are trying to use.

For instance.  If I am in a sketch and am using the line tool and I draw a three sided (open) box and then want to use the line tool somewhere else on the sheet I have to either hit esc or 'L' to stop from continuing making another line, but now I have to click 'L' again to get the tool back.  Obviously this is a fairly trivial problem, but this same behavior exists with other tools as well without the obvious solution.  For another example:  The measure tool.  If I click an open area it deselects everything, but sometimes I am zoomed way into where I want to look and I don't want to lose my location, but my screen is filled with stuff (no open space) and I would really like to just be able to hit a button to clear my entries and select some new ones.  In ProE I would just right click (if I recall correctly) and it clears my selections.  That is all I want.

And while I am looking for simple fixes for silly problems.  In ProE I was able to right click on a surface to ignore that surface and it would highlight the next surface or edge or whatever and continuing to right click would toggle through all the features below your mouse.  I know I can use the select other tool, but it is a lot more cumbersome for simple selections than the toggle (like selecting the other side of a piece of sheet metal without rotating or pulling up the select other tool).

Anyway I am slowly coming to grips with SolidWorks, but these things have been eating at me and I figure that they are so basic that there must be some sort of tool or shortcut.

Thanks.