Shortcuts of Life

Shortcut keys... simple, easy, effective and something you should learn. Most every windows/mac/unix software has keyboard shortcuts to enable you to work faster in your daily computing life. If you are not using them you you may be overlooking one of the biggest time savers.

Over the years I have learned the ones in AutoCAD/ADT and know a good majority of the ones in VIZ/MAX to leverage the software effectively. I run across users continually who are unaware of the numerous keyboard shortcuts there are. For example did you know that if you have multiple drawings open in AutoCAD you can use the Ctrl + Tab key combo to cycle through the open drawings (think a continuous loop) and if you go past the drawing you want you can always reverse the loop by using the Ctrl + Shift + Tab key combo.

Want a few more standard window's shortcut key combos?
Ctrl + A - Select All
Ctrl + C - Copy
Ctrl + X - Cut
Ctrl + V - Paste
Ctrl + S - Save
Ctrl + Shift + S - Save As (for most programs, those that do not use this should be...) =)

Now I mentioned I have been learning the VIZ/Max key combos (of which there are a bunch) and found a few that you may not be aware of:
Shift + Z - Undo View Change
Shift + Y - Redo View Change
Ctrl + Z - Undo Scene Change
Ctrl + Y - Redo Scene Change

Viewport changes:
P = Perspective
U = User
F - Front
T = Top
B = Bottom
L = Left
C = Camera (changes to a camera selection if more than 1)
V = Select view from list (or keyboard entry)
Alt + W = Maximize/Minimize View

And my personal favorite I did not know until today:
Alt + Middle Wheel Mouse Button is Arc Rotate, no more need to use the icon from the toolbar. This even works in Viz Render!

There are plenty more useful shortcut keys for each of these programs. To learn more you should check the help file and/or the accompanying quick reference card that most of these programs ship with.

happy "quick key" rendering and cadding...