Shortcuts | Best Practices

I've caught up on reviewing some issues that were introduced in 2011.

One occurs when a single letter shortcut shares the same first letter of other two character shortcut.  It does not appear first in the order but should.  This prevents single shortcuts from being matched on the first try so they can then be executed with the spacebar.

Another item is only defined shortcuts export to XML. This makes it more difficult for someone to setup their standards outside of Revit.

In both these cases the solutions look straightforward.  What I appreciated in investigating these was the subtlety of the usage.  In each release we define new commands and they require shortcuts.  We would like to define these using the best practices so it would be great to hear how people approach setting theirs up - not just for me but for all the readers.

Here are a couple simple suggestions to start:

Adjacency

Avoid defining shortcuts that are far apart on the keyboard.  "WA" is better for Wall than "WL"

In 2011 the use of accelerators such as Cntrl or Alt should expand the number of combinations and allow one to group many shortcuts on a single side of the keyboard.

Mnemonics

This is subtle but could be used when characters in the word are already in-use.  In English for instance PH can replace an F sound.  The idea is to be able to find a sound that evokes the command and then find characters that make the sound.

There are many types of mnemonics "WA" evokes the sound of "Wall' better than "WL"

Acronyms can also be used such as the way "Roy G Biv" symbolizes the colors of the spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet).  In Revit the shortcut of "ER" might be used for "Editing Requests"

These are just a couple examples to get people thinking and sharing.  What criteria and systems are you using?

_erik

 

Comments

[Aristide]

Not only close together, but I keep most frequent commands toward the keyboard's left side. The idea is that your cursor shouldn't leave the drawing area, so your right hand shouldn't leave the mouse. It's hard to find right-side keys with your left hand without looking at the keyboard, and disrupting the flow.

AA is mandatory, DD over DI, SS beats SL/SP - TR is right there already, and I prefer WW over MV. Generally I like two-key shortcuts better than one, but maybe that comes from hammering the escape key all day.

[gaby424]

It interestingly to analise what are the most used comands in a given time. This top list of comands have the bigger priority to receive the best , the fastest shortcut. The fastest are the double key. Before write my short list , i want to highlite that you can also use the same shortcut for a lot of things that can`t lisen for the shorcut in the same time. For exeple: Edid wall sketch, Edit floor sketch, Edit roof sketch, Edit profile, etc

So short list here:
EE for editing sketching for everithing
FF for finishing sketching for everithing
AA Align
WW Wall
MM Move
CC Copy
RR Reference plane
SS section
DD Dimension

After this top of comands, the other used tools receive 2 near letter like Door(DR) , Windows(WD) etc. The third principle for less used and complicated names are first letters from the tool name ex: Splif Face(SP), Plan region (PR)...

that`s my opinon :)

[Tim Waldock]

I too have tried to use the same shortcut for multiple functions, but it is really hard to work out which ones could work. With so many new contextual commands available as shortcuts there are many options open to us. The trick is to find shortcuts to use that will not conflict with each other - so you have to avoid commands that initiate a new function (ie they effectively cancel the current operation and start a new one).

As an example, The Wall command (WA) will pretty much start drawing a new wall whatever you are doing. So, if you also assign WA to "Wall Attach" it won't work even though it is a contextual command, because it just starts a new wall.
If you try the above scenario with "DT" for both "repeating detail" and for "Detach Wall", it appears to work in a 3D view when you test it, but not in a plan view - that is because "repeating detail" is not a valid command in 3D, so then it only finds the command "Detach Wall" and works. So it takes a lot of testing and planning to get your shortcuts working.

An example of duplicate shortcuts that do work are:
AW for "Attach Wall"
AW for "Add/Remove Wall Sweep"
AW for "Add/Remove Wall Reveal"
None of these conflict because they are all contextual commands and do not have an Escape at the beginning of the command.

You can also duplicate shortcuts where the commands exist only in family or project environments. eg:
CN for Control (family environment)
CN for Column (project environment)

The whole process of setting up a fully working system of shortcuts is immensely complicated - you need a spreadsheet and a very good understanding of the command structure. Then you need to do a lot of testing.

This process is not helped by the fact that there are often multiple commands in the shortcut file that appear the same - there are 4 commands listed for "Attach Top/Base" for "Contextual Tabs>Modify Wall". We definitely need a description column in the keyboard shortcut dialog box, so we can figure out which is which.

[bt]

Gaby424:

Those are literally the same shortcuts we have come up with!

We hace also settled on the WW type syntax for the most used commands, since it is so easy to type them.

BT