Overhaul keyboard shortcuts for tools and menu items

[Intuos5]

The keyboard shortcuts should be overhauled.

 

1. Right now, they are tedious to set-up due to the dropdown for the modifier key combinations that you need to adjust by mouse. Ideally, the input box itself should also capture modifier keys that were pressed in addition to function keys, numeric keys, letter or symbol keys.

 

2. To the user, it makes no sense to have an arbitrary restriction on modifier key combinations just because an item is in the menus.

 

 

 

You should be able to use any shortcut you want anywhere (except for OS reserved ones).

 

3. The pop-up warning can take care of shortcut conflicts for the user and signal that a shortcut in the tools has already been used in the menus. And possibly give the means to immediately edit the conflicting hotkey from within the pop-up. This saves a lot of back and forth navigation, because, at the moment, the conflicting hotkey is just removed.

[_James]

A variation on point 3. would be to allow the user to set up the shortcuts as they would like them and then it could summarise the conflicts and allow the user to rectify them at the end, before they are committed.

 

i agree that it's quite annoying to try to change something, only to find it won't let you until you change some random command that you then have to search for, think of a suitable replacement etc before heading back to the original item (if you remember).

[Intuos5]

Another interesting way to increase the number of shortcuts is to allow multi-key shortcut sequences (e.g. F, I for Fillet). FreeCAD implemented this with a user specifiable delay in ms. The command is activated if no other key was pressed during the specified time window in ms.

 

Basically, you can use single key shortcuts, shortcuts with all modifier combinations and any combination thereof (e.g. something random for illustration sake: F, Ctrl + I, Alt + F2, Shift F Or just F, F Or F, Spacebar + F Or T, R, I, M). This is very flexible and helps people who are used to aliases (Autocad or shortcuts like Revit). The one system to do everything you want.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Intuos5

[MattWhite]

I like Blenders approach for changing short cut keys.  I also like to move all of the commands I can to the left side of the keyboard, so I can enter commands with one hand.  If I have to take my hand off of the mouse, I'm losing production time.   I don't care about logical short cuts like f=fillet...   I have the standard x=move, but I set shift x to move by points.  Any multiple keystroke that can easily be executed one handed without stressing my hand is fair game.

[Justin21]

Posting this here to avoid creating a second thread with overlapping content—I think my thoughts relate, at least somewhat, to the original post. 

 

On 2/7/2023 at 3:19 PM, Intuos5 said:

to allow multi-key shortcut sequences

 

First, I completely agree with Intuos5's suggestion for multi-key sequences and would emphasize how nice it would be to have the option of double character shortcuts (Revit, for instance, does this with commands like LI for 'Line', DI for 'Dimension', WA for 'Wall', and so on for essentially all their tools). This would expand the options for shortcuts while making modelling more efficient. 

 

My other request (which is more like a fourth item added to the list) would be to allow the use of modifiers for all functions in the 'keys' tab of the workspace editor (mode groups, other keys, snapping keys). As an example, I'd love to be able to use ctrl and/or shift for commands such as "launch quick search" to become something like ctrl+F (making it more familiar to the typical find function in other programs) rather than just F making that key available for another command. I have tried to figure out if there's already a way to map modifier keys to those functions but have been informed that this is currently not possible.