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Dedicated Autocad keyboard

Anonymous

Dedicated Autocad keyboard

Anonymous
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Hey Guys

this week i made a dedicated autocad keyboard.

Aftert spending 3 months reassigning my unused buttons on my keyboard i decided to buy a external numpad, and re assign all the numbers to my shortcuts.

 

im really pleased with how it turned out... i might have even convinced the autocad veterans in the office of it use!    Emoticono sacando la lengua

 

id love to hear if anyone else has either a dedicated keyboard, or any what shortcuts they have assigned to their own keyboards.

 

 

 

 

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Respuestas (11)

Patchy
Mentor
Mentor

For veteran users they will not learn new things, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.

New users learn to use ribbons, head up display, they learned that in school, hardly type anymore.

 

Ask your co-workers, I bet you they will walk away.

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Anonymous
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the old school boys were generally underwhelmed...... until they saw me inserting particular blocks, at the right scale, with attributes, all on one button press.....

i have another battle.......... im trying to show them how fast annotative dimensioning can be.
i want to show these boys what 2016 can do to make their lives easier. &and faster)
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pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend
Cute novelty, and we all are impressed with a demonstration or two, check out the sales numbers at your local State Fair Grounds. I suspect you will probably sell a dozen or so, but at the end of the day you are just trying to replace the old Digitizers that many folks still love and use (and rumors are abound that new drivers are being written to bring it back to AutoCAD properly).

Your keyboard design seems to assume the user is just using one program all day long and nothing else. No interaction with any other operation, software, or much else really. I wonder how real that is.

Get it out there soon and that will be the real test: buy a ticket to AU2015 (or AU2016 next year), set up a booth, and prove it to the AutoCAD world in the only place where the AutoCAD universe shows up every year http://au.autodesk.com/las-vegas/overview I'll see you there to test it out in person.
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Anonymous
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Dean, i think you misunderstand my intentions.

this was a demonstration of the setup i use on a daily basis.

This really is no novelty. my keyboard works extremely efficiently for my needs. I spend my days drawing archtechtural woodwork. the setup and button location is EXACTLY what i use.

 

i joined a company 3 months ago and previously had only spent about 10 hours or so in autocad.

this little project started by me trying to catch up to the autocad veterans in this office, and trying to make my workflow more efficient.

The limitations of my normal keyboard spurred my on to find a better solution, and to have dedicated shortcut keyboard works great.

A numpad seemed to be the best/ cheapest option for reassigning keys as i could still keep a normal keyboard without any conflict.

 

 

i certainly do not think this is a marketable product, and further more. if anyone would like me to explain how i did this, which software i used to reassign the keys, or the link to the numpad which i bought off of amazon please just ask. im happy to show you how this works.

 

the reason for this post, was a genuine interest in how other people use, and customize their autocad interfaces. the more people you can learn from the better designer/drafter we will all become.

 

 

pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend
Like I said, I like what you have done: but it looks to me like you are ready to customize big time but chose the "limited" method for now to do so as it appears you are not really using a stock keyboard.

While the era of Digitizers may be waning, you are doing with your number pad what every AutoCAD Digitzer user has done for the last 30-years to a bigger success rate since you can squeeze more on there than the limit of the number pad.

I personally think you wasted three months doing what you did: and if you purchased that number pad key, even more wasted. You could have easily placed ten or more buttons on a toolbar and parked it on screen in AutoCAD to tap anytime you wanted. Or done the same with a custom right-click menu. Or done the same with a little LISP and a quick type of a shortcut that does all each of the buttons does now. Or a combination of all three.

And if inserting blocks is a challenge, ToolPalettes make the task simpler.

Creating a custom TAB in the Ribbon to always do those ten-15 keyboard/number pad items is yet another method.

So, tell us, what does each of your buttons do, let's wean you off this circa 1980s solution you found into options that will speed you up for real and make you a true champion at the office.
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Anonymous
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Ahhh dean, i feel like i want to challenge you to a speed test! 

there is no way you could be quicker with a tool pallete! you would have to move your mouse across the screen find the correct block. click and then drag it into position.

 

using my keyboard, my mouse hand stays still. one key press has the block linked to my mouse, its inserted at the correct scale, and all i have to do is one mouse click in the correct position. BOOM block inserted! 

i will say that i looked at making a block pallete to begin with. but we actually use very few blocks. so i assigned the 3 i use everyday to individual keys. (macros)

 

 you are correct i am limited to the amount of hotkeys i can assign. but in the three months ive taken to get to this point. i still have a couple of spare keys left over. 

 

 

some of the buttons i have assigned are autocad macros aswell. so the xl vert is a vertical  x line that button also activates a construction layer

so that can easily turn off my construction x lines

the macro im using is as follows:

 

^C^C-layer;S;"CONSTRUCTION";^C^C_xline;h;

 

 

same thing for the dimension button and quick leader button.

i want those items to be inserted onto a specific layer

 

^C^C-layer;S;"DIM-10";^C^C_dim    - dimension button

^C^C-layer;S;"DIM-10";^C^C_qleader   - quick leader          

 

and my block insert macros look like this.

 

^C^C-layer;S;"DIM-10";^C^C_-insert;Section_new;\;1;0;;

^C^C-layer;S;"DIM-10";^C^C_-insert;material_symbol;\;1;0;;

 

 

i see your block pallette i raise you macros..... :cara_guiñando_un_ojo:

         

 

pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend
>>>...Ahhh dean, i feel like i want to challenge you to a speed test! ...<<<
Anytime! I'm old school, one hand on keyboard, one hand on the trackball, and run AutoCAD in a customize almost-CLEANSCREEN menu mode, LISPed up to the hilt, and I use a miniature keyboard with no keypad so my one hand can hit all the keys. And I insert about 3-4 dozen different blocks in many files at any given day. I assigned one mouse button to be <enter> for added speed.

With Lisp, you can speed up your macros:
X <enter> could easily be your Xline>H>Layer>Construction
D <enter> would be your DIM>Layer>dim-10
Q <enter> would be your QLeader>Layer>Dim-10
SN <enter> would be your Insert>Section_new>Layer>Dim-10>1x scale.
MS <enter> would be your Insert>Material_Symbol>Layer>Dim-10>1x scale.

and so on.

Do you want to learn lisp on your own, or do you want folks to write these for you? You'll learn basic lisp in 10-minutes, figure out how to auto-load them in another 10-minutes, and use the next 2-months, 29-days, 23.5 hours to master more detailed Lisp coding.

Anonymous
No aplicable

Absolutely i want to learn,  i love this stuff.

Automation is at the heart of what we do. anything to reduce clicks!

 

lets see a screen cap of your autocad, and a picture of your keyboard!!!

 

 

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Anonymous
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Great powerpoint tutorial. ill definitely go through that this weekend. 

after speaking to you aerlier this week i started looking around at lisp tutorials, and started to realise what i can do with it.

 

i found a pretty sweet piece of lisp, that put viewport boundaries into model space. this is a great tool for me. i have to revise other people drawings, and this shows me how they have laid out their drawings.

 

i love that mouse! you must have thumb muscles of steel!!!! Guiño

Spoiler
 

 

 

Anonymous
No aplicable

hell yeah! what software did you use?

 

numpadsuperpowers.com doesnt seem to be up and running anymore.

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