Lessons We Can Learn From Gamers

Pro gamers stay on top by the slimmest margins. To stay on top, they have worked out the most efficient habits on how to interact with a computer. These lessons are transferable to CAD work.

Eliminate Hunt and Peck

I hope nobody reading this types by the hunt-and-peck method anymore. Even the fastest hunt and peck die-hards top out at roughly 50 wpm. Good touch typists, on the other hand, operate at 100+. Clearly, hunt-and-peck destroys productivity.

For CAD work, hunt-and-peck means something different since one is one the keyboard and the other is on the mouse. It looking at the keyboard, looking for a keystroke because shortcuts are spread out over the entire keyboard. It is also taking the mouse hand off the mouse needlessly.

The best way to eliminate hunt and peck for a keyboard-and-mouse situation, as gamers have long established, is the WASD position. The WASD position is where the pinky is on Left Shift, ring finger on A, middle finger on W, and index finger on D. Lumion developers know this well, as they have set tailored their controls for WASD position out of the box.

To implement this effectively for AutoCAD/C3D, there are a couple of things that really help:

1. Change your favorite keyboard shortcuts so that they are easily reached from WASD position. (See Fig.1 for my personal shortcut layout)
2. Get a mouse with thumb buttons. Make one of the ENTER key. This prevents having to move your hand off the mouse to press ENTER on the keyboard.

Fig.1: An Example of a WASD friendly shortcut layout

Once these things are set up, the hunt and peck will be largely eliminated from your work. No longer will you be looking down at the keyboard to find single keystrokes for simple commands. The mouse hand will stay on the mouse unless you are typing something out (and not just pressing enter).

Because the keyboard hand is almost always in the same position, you will quickly build up muscle memory for the most common keystrokes and most CAD operations will be done at incredible speed without wasting any conscious thought on it. Your muscles will take care of the trees so that you can focus on the forest, so to speak.

Consider Turning Off Mouse "Pointer Precision"

Windows has a mouse pointer option called "pointer precision". It is what gamers call mouse acceleration. Basically, if this option is on, moving the mouse one inch slowly moves the pointer a short distance, while moving the mouse one inch fast moves the pointer a long distance.

If pointer precision turned off, moving the mouse an inch moves the pointer the same distance every single time regardless of how fast it is moved. What gamers found out if you use a mouse without acceleration for a long time, you end up developing incredible muscle precision with the mouse.You pick up an uncanny ability to move the mouse point very quickly and accurately.

As a side benefit, it also encourages using the elbow for larger movements, which can help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome on the wrist.

Have a Second Monitor and Setup Your Palette Positions

I'm sure most CAD operators already have a second screen but in case there are folks who don't out there: you really need a second screen. On the second screen should be your most commonly used palettes: toolspace, custom palettes, xref manager, sheet set manager, and whatever else you use regularly. (I use the property palette so much that I keep it docked on the main screen.)

Set them up, keep them open, and don't move them.  This eliminate having to search around or hover over minimized palettes to get the information you need.

If you need a screen to have PDFs, images, emails, and other things open, pick up a third screen. Screens are so cheap these days that there is no reason not to.

Conclusion

To sum, none of us should have to search for any panels, keys, or icons to get things done. That is a painfully slow way to work. If we can minimize our hand movements and perform commands by touch alone instead of hunt and peck, and if we can train our eyes to looks exactly where we need to look to find what we need, we can push all these tasks to our subconscious, focus on the design, and tap into a flow state regularly to produce drawings at incredible efficiency.

Please let me know what you think in the comments, and thanks for the read.