Sunday 28 December 2014

More AutoCAD Keyboard Ctrl

After several days of roast turkey, hot turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, and the oh-so-Canadian Boxing Day shopping, it's time to shake off the Tryptophan and get back to AutoCAD.

Staying in the spirit of Ctrl keyboard features and tools, I have created a graphic showing all the out-of-the-box AutoCAD Ctrl + keyboard shortcuts.

I have verified these in AutoCAD 2014 and Civil 3D 2014 with the results as shown, and also have run most on AutoCAD 2015, with no differences noted; please let me know if your results differ.





I have done a little visual sorting as well:

Blue    =  Palettes and display
Yellow =  File operations
Green =  Toggles and Variables
Pink    =  Selection and Clipboard
White  =  No action

This is the out-of-the-box configuration; notice there are plenty of unassigned keys for your own customization!

For example, I map CTRL+SHIFT+V to _Pasteorig (paste to original coordinates), since I do this often. I try to avoid changing any default settings, with the exception of F1, which I re-map to Cancel, since it drives us all nuts when we accidentally hit the F1 key and AutoCAD launches Help.

I hope this helps you try and keep track of all the built in shortcuts; Happy CADding! 

Update: FYI, Here are the out-of the box CTRL+SHIFT shortcuts:
CTRL+SHIFT+C   Copy with base Point
CTRL+SHIFT+H   Toggle HIDEPALETTES
CTRL+SHIFT+I     Toggle Infer Constraints
CTRL+SHIFT+L    Select Previous
CTRL+SHIFT+P    Toggle QPMODE
CTRL+SHIFT+S    SAVEAS
CTRL+SHIFT+V    Paste as Block

2015-01-06 Update: I have corrected the CTRL+N (NEW) and CTRL+M (no command) keys in the graphic



Thursday 18 December 2014

Having [Ctrl]


There are plenty of ways to input commands in AutoCAD: the Ribbon, Toolbars, even drop down menus [If you don't see your drop down menus, set MENUBAR = 1].  Being a user since R11, I still do a lot of command entry using the keyboard (but I have abandoned the screen menu). 

Aside from typing in commands, there are lots of built-in keyboard shortcuts in AutoCAD. I'm sure most everyone knows [ctrl] + C to copy to clipboard, and [ctrl] + V to paste from the clipboard, but most every key pressed with [ctrl] is also a command, a variable, or a toggle.


Let's look at some of the most common AutoCAD [ctrl] button shortcuts:

[ctrl] + A selects all objects
[ctrl] + B toggles SNAPMODE
[ctrl] + D toggles Dynamic UCS
[ctrl] + E cycles Isoplane modes
[ctrl] + G toggles GRIDMODE

[ctrl] + C copies objects to the clipboard
[ctrl] + X deletes objects and puts them on the clipboard
[ctrl] + V pastes objects from the clipboard
[ctrl] + Z Undo command

[ctrl] + [shift] + C copies to the clipboard with a base point that you pick
[ctrl] + [shift] + B pastes from the clipboard as a block

[ctrl] + N brings up NEW dialogue box
[ctrl] + O brings up the OPEN dialogue box
[ctrl] + P brings up the PLOT dialogue box

[ctrl] + 1 opens/closes the Properties Palette
[ctrl] + 2 opens/closes Design Center
[ctrl] + 3 opens/closes the tool palette
[ctrl] + 4 opens/closes the Sheet Set Manager
[ctrl] + 9 shows/hides the command line
[ctrl] + 0 shows/hides all toolbars

[ctrl] + [tab] cycles through open drawings
[ctrl] + [page up]/[page down] cycles through layouts in a drawing

There are plenty more, experiment to see what others you can use.

What's your favourite? comment and share!

Sunday 14 December 2014

Welcome to Frozen Layers!

Edmonton January: Blue sky, white everything else.
Being Canadian has both benefits and challenges.  For example, we have free health care, hockey, and poutine.  There may be more benefits besides those to being Canadian, but I think I've covered the important bits already!

There is a slight downside to Canada-winter: those 3 or 4 (or more!) months when you only see your neighbour when you're both shoveling the driveway clear of the overnight snowfall, or perhaps pushing his car when he is stuck at the end of the street.  I know, soon enough, it will be April, and folks will start venturing outside once again.  Barbecues will be uncovered, the snow brushes get put away (till that big storm in May), and thoughts turn to the garden once again.  It isn't all bad, really: having bad weather helps appreciate the good weather even more.

The weather doesn't inhibit my love of AutoCAD, though, and I figure after a couple years writing on internal blogs, it's high time to share publicly tips, solutions, and news about AutoCAD.  So, here we go! 

After noting that every cool (and every awful) CAD pun has long since been used, I chose Frozen Layers, since it is not only a part of AutoCAD, but a part of being Canadian.  Since I find it beneficial when understand how things work, I'll try to explain things here best I can.

Time to grab a double-double!