If You Dont' Use Shift+RMB Keyboard Shortcuts... You Should.

Apparently, shift + rmb (right mouse button) keyboard shortcuts are something that very few people use. It's very handy. For example, I can just press shift+rmb,d in the middle of drawing a line to snap to a node without having to escape out and turn osnap on.

 Because of the shift+rmb shortcuts, I rarely have osnap left on any more.

 After a couple of minutes of experimentation, my findings for the shortcut defaults (as of 2018) are listed below. The most useful ones, in my humble opinion, are bolded. Not only are they needed, they are easily reacheable from the WASD home position of the left hand. (Which is the key for lightning fast cad work. I will elaborate on that in another article)

Keyboard Shortcuts After Shift+rmb

q - Quadrant
w - Midpoint between 2 points
e - Endpoint
r - Nearest
t - Point filters (submenu)

i - Intersection
p - Perpendicular
a - Apparent intersect
s - Insert
d - Node
f - From
t - Tangent
k - Temporary tracking point
o - Options (dialogue box)
n - None
m - Mid of

 3 - 3D Osnap (submenu)  v - Vertex
  m - Midpoint on edge
  c - Center of face
  k - Knot
  p - Perpendicular
  N - Nearest to face

  r - Nearest plane of point cloud
  y - Nearest to centerline of cylinder on point cloud
  u - Perpendicular to edge of point cloud
  i - Intersection of point cloud
  d - Node of point cloud

The Hidden Gem: Extrude ?!

l - Parameters manager (!)x - Extrude (!)

 Surprisingly, shift+rmb,x is a shortcut for extrude. That is great! If you do any 3d modeling at all you know how much extrude get used. You probably have a custom hotkey set up for it already along with press/pull.

 But there is something to be said about a default shortcut that you can use regardless of whether you have your own setup or not (e.g. borrowing someone else's machine for a minute).

 Shift+rmb,l to pop up the Parameters Manager palette is just... odd. I suppose it would be much more useful if we did more parametric drawings in my office.

Conclusion

Whether you find the extrude shortcut as neat as I do, the common snap shortcuts should definitely be used often if you want the best of having onsap on AND off.

Are there any favorite keyboard shortcuts that you have?

Please feel free to comment and share, and thanks for the read.

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