Hotkeys

[crrs]

Hi.

Can we please have the hotkeys/keybinds we want rather than those you are telling us we want?

I am a solidworks user. I have a mouse with about 30 keybinds on it and I do use those whenever I model. I have a g13 keypad with another 25 keybinds. Those I also use whenever I model. I use keybinds in word and excel and even there you can actually access ALL commands those programs have and keybind them however you like as long as you do it the microsoft way. I use keybinds when I play a game, I use keybinds in sketchup and inventor and so on. I even made keybinds with html tags and css lines to make my life easier while writing a page.

With the same gear I managed to create two useful keybinds in keyshot... tumble and pan. Everything else I need to do, I have to have a little mouse left click fest.

For example. I open a file. I drag and drop my product in. I have to click the import button. Why? If I dragged and dropped I clearly want it there. And if I did it by mistake, I can simply delete, yes?

I have the model in. But I want it positioned like the models I already have in the file. So I need to copy position paste position. Mouse click here mouse click there. Move object, duplicate model, delete - are you sure you want to delete? (of course I am and if it's a mistake, ctrl+z, makes sense, yes?) - copy material, paste linked material and to do that you actually have to go into a rmb menu's submenu. Why?

All I really want is a list of all commands in keyshot and fields where I can create my own shortcuts. And a search box where I can look for a specific command instead of scrolling through an endless list of useless fluff.

This should have already been part of the program. Different ppl have different workflows and different ways of doing things. To all different people you only offer a handful of things and that's it.

Thank you.

[mattjgerard]

Have you looked at the hotkey tab in the preferences? All the keybinds available are in there, although its not everything. I have (and others) requested to put more and more options on the list. I come from Cinema4D where pretty much everything you can think of has a shortcut you can access, and has a quick search list of functions, so I totally hear what you are saying. I'm a shortcut freak as well (not as deep as you though) and so I've gone far to reprogram the shortcuts in keyshot and connect them to my StreamDeck, which I love and allows me to scratch that itch on a regular basis.

All those little nitpicky things like the confirmation boxes for deleting etc have long been on my list of stuff to add the "Do Not Show Dialog In The Future" tick boxes. The material thing has a mouse keybind I use all the time to copy/paste materials, but it only works on single objects, not groups.

So, yeah, lots of UI and useability tweaks are needed to keep the software fun and easy to use.

[crrs]

Hey Matt

thanks for the reply, it kinda helps knowing that you're not the only one.

I have indeed looked at that tab. Last year. I didn't find anything useful there. So I kinda tabled the whole issue as a "crap user friendliness". I was watching the Inneo keyshot world last summer and there was a guy there who had a huge assembly. I mean huge. I think it was some agricultural piece of equipment. I stared as he explained how he works and I was very very grateful that the stuff I work with has up to 10 solids. Occasionally more, but that doesn't happen very often.

But tbh. when you are pressed for time and you still want to produce something to be at least content with if proud of cannot be achieved, mousing around instead of keybinding is really really slow and ineffective. As dumb as it sounds, mice are nice and they do come in handy, but not as a main tool.

I know it is silly but back in school when I first learned how to use a mouse on the first PC I had ever seen - bare in mind, I jumped from commodore-type 'computers' to a 486 and I found windows paint on windows... 3. I was like wooo. And then my mate who was a computer geek - turned out to be one as well a wee later - pointed out that he could be a lot faster with the keyboard than I could with a mouse. I said nope, you cannot, you NEED the mouse to click on things. Turned out that you really did not. To this day, I am using windows key + r to open what I need rather than look for a sodding icon.

I just updated some reports for a database and guess what... keybinds in ms access as well. Why look for a button on the screen and then point and click while I can just push a key - the one that gives me a sketch radius in solidworks - to apply a filter and then use the solidworks concentricity command to print that report to pdf. I don't even need to think about it. It's one of those muscle memory things.

And then I have to work in keyshot and it feels like watching paint dry. Rmb. Look at menu, pick what you need to open the submenu, click again. Click to change tab, click here and there and everywhere. It is slow and inefficient. I would like to use my clicking time to actually make a new model, a better looking one. I have too little time as it is.

I know, it probably is profanity to mention that here, but I really really wish that v-ray worked on solidworks. I loved using v-ray for sketchup. Because it was so... neat. Just a plug in, use your entire sketchup scene as you saw fit, load vray materials into your sketchup materials as you went along, tweak materials, render, all in sketchup. No need to drag and drop and move here and move there. Move all models as you see fit within the cad program (ok... sketchup doesn't quite earn the cad label but still, modelling software) and then just render. I've attached a pic from a model I made back in 2018. It's a clay rendering done in sketchup make 2017 with a trial of v-ray. The other pic is an actual huge model I made in sketchup in 2016, rendered in sketchup 2008 with v-ray 1 trial I think or 1 point something. Light source is a hdri on a light dome - I didn't make the vegetation or the car or the person, those are all from the 3d warehouse.

And if you are wondering about the low quality of the pics: they are screenshots from a web-page where I have them posted.

But now. Just imagine the pointing and clicking and painstaking menu navigation you have to do to work this in keyshot. To be honest, I'm not sure that it could take such a large model. As I said, I am only using keyshot because I have to use solidworks for my job. Otherwise, it would be sketchup and v-ray all the way, every day, no hesitation there.

So yes, a little more usability wouldn't just be nice, it is a must.

(edited... don't blame me sometimes sketchup easily becomes ketchup )