When will we be able to set custom hotkeys, if ever?

[Anonymous]

Hello all!

One thing that kills me using Fusion is the distinct lack of hotkeys/shortcut keys. I am consistantly calling up the toolbox or shifting my mouse from toolbar to part to toolbar to part to dialog to part to dialog to part to toolbar to part....etc. Moving from my old design program (Vectorworks) where ANY command has a customisable hotkey, the mouse movement is driving me crazy.

The BIGGEST issue I have is, you can't use the keyboard to navigate in most dialog boxes.

For example, if I need to split a body several times, I have to hit "Split body" click the body, move my mouse over to the dialog, hit "splitting tool", move back over the part, hit the splitting body, then hit okay. This is a lot of back and forth of I need to split a body into 5-6 layers (or more sometimes).

Not just in this dialog, but in the Extrude dialog (for example) one can't use the keyboard to highlight/use the drop down menus - I have to click the part I want to extrude, hit "E", change to 2-way (I usually use two way), enter the two dimensions, click the dropdown for "New Body" so it doesn't join, then hit OK.

Is this even a plan? If so, is there an estimated timeline?

Thanks!

[rhudaynath]

Hi,

There are keyboard shortcuts provided for couple of commands. You may find those keys in Toolbar Dropdown list e.g. Press pull Q, Fillet F, Sketch-rectangle R

Addition to this there is quick command search box appear when you hit S , there you can search all commands and pin your favourite ones.

[Anonymous]

Hi @rhudaynath,

I understand some things have hotkeys, but some of them are strange -

For example, fillet (f) is only for models - even if you hit "f" in the sketch workspace. Maybe I use Fillet on Sketches more and so it would make more sense for me to change "f" to the sketch fillet.

Plus, a lot of things that I may use constantly, due to my design workflow, do not have hotkeys - like "Box" or "Split Body". These I wold LOVE to be able to assign a hotkey to.

Also, I do use the toolbox, and I do have my "most used - no hotkey" tools there, but hitting "s" then selecting the tool is one more button press and mouse move than would be needed if we had customizable hotkeys.

My question wasn't "Why doesn't Fusion have hotkeys" - I know it does, and I use them.

My question was "Why does Fuson have SO FEW hotkeys, and why can't I customize them?" with a follow up question of "Will Fusion EVER have more hotkeys/customizable hotkeys?"

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

Good question.  Certainly, ease of use is a focus for us, and we do hope to improve some of the interactions going forward.  I saw 3 separate questions/comments here:

1. using hotkeys in a dialog (i.e. while a command is active)
2. painful workflow going back and forth to the dialog
3. allow users to specify their own hotkeys

(let me know if I missed any)

1. This is one we've struggled with internally.  Today, as you've noticed, hotkeys are not in effect when a command is active.  The reason for this is that most commands have an active edit control which has keyboard focus.  So, when you start Extrude with a profile selected, and you are just doing the default distance extrude, you can immediately start typing a distance.  And, because the distance can be an equation, you can type letters.  So, that pretty effectively block regular characters from being hotkeys during a command.  We discussed using modifier keys like CTRL or SHIFT, but that gets hard to discover

2. The back-and-forth to the dialog is sometimes painful.  We do hope to address this at some point.  Again, it is a complex design problem.  We orginially had more of a floating UI that followed the cursor around, which meant less distance to go to the dialog, but the floating controls were more annoying than the mouse movements.  We continue to discuss this.

3. customizable hotkeys.  THis is on the roadmap, but I can't say exactly when it might be there.  We do want to allow users to override our default definitions, and provide their own.  We don't have a mechanism designed for this yet, but we'll ask for input at that time.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

Thanks @jeff_strater!

For point 1 - Other design programs seem to implement using the keyboard to navigate dialog boxes, and most of them seem to use tab to cycle through options, arrows to navigate dropdowns, and enter to select (a second enter would exit the dialog, like hitting OK.) In this instance, neither numbers or letters are being used. Has the team ever considered something like this? Or perhaps some type of hotkey that "moves into" dialog navigation mode? (One of my old design programs had this set up - Selet a tool, the next number typed is the extrude, but pressing CMD+SHIFT+TAB or something let me move into dialog navigation - meaning with tab, and arrow keys, I could change the extrude type dropdown, etc."Enter" then moved be out of dialog navigation and back into entering numbers/variables).

Point 2 - Moving the mouse back and forth would cease to be an issue if we could navigate the entire dialog box by keyboard (by using tab, arrow keys, etc. like addressed above). I understand this is complex code wise, you have to make sure the commands work and that the dialog retains focus for the keys to be "captured". I agree - the floating dialog sounds very annoying (can't count how many times I've had to move the current, small dialog box out of the way!) This is where you have to carefully weigh the majority opinion - and in this case, maybe us keyboard warriors are left in the dust! I think the "shift into dialog navigation mode" hotkey may be a good solution for this? Keeping it so we can keep our hands on the keys and others can click away.

Point 3 - I love that it is on the roadmap already. I also understand how difficult this can be - especially if you guys decide to go all the way and make them environment specific (like "f" in sketch is sketch fillet, but "f" in model is model fillet). I know this will most likely be rolled out in several incriments, like "Oh here's more hotkeys", a while later, "Oh, some hotkeys can be costomized" a while after, "Oh now everything is customized!"

Thanks!

[jeff_strater]

Good point about tab/shift-tab.  Fusion does support that, but in a slightly different way than some tools I've used.  Tab is used to navigate between the value entry fields in a command.  Try the Move command.  Tab will move between X, Y, Z, X rotation, Y rotation, and Z rotation, but not to the other fields.  This was intentional at the time, based on the idea that most users don't want to tab to the less-used fields (like "Match Shape" in Extrude).  But, maybe that idea is worth revisiting.  I suppose you could put it on the idea station and see if others agree.  It's hard for us to tell whether most users would prefer one way over the other.

Jeff

[chmed]

Please add tab functions for dialogs.  I'm currently wrestling with the Dogbone add-in.  It's great that it exists, but it's not all the way there yet.  I'm having trouble with it placing the dogbone in the correct spot when a feature (like a tab) is stepped (not the full thickness of the rest of the component) and my workaround involved editing the sketches that the add-in creates.  This editing is basically just mirroring the circle across one of the lines.  But! it takes a lot of clicking.  The mirror function is one of many that are done in steps.  You select something then you select the next different something then you do the function.  Tabbing through these steps makes A LOT OF SENSE.  It's how almost all programs these days work whether it's entering your name and password to log into something or entering dates in a spreadsheet.  

[neljoshua]

@Anonymous & @chmed,

Custom hotkeys would be amazing!

I also totally agree regarding adding "tab" functionality.  It seems logical to me to have the tab key always move between all of the active fields, regardless of expectations regarding use.

[Anonymous]

The unanswered quest for user definable hotkeys dates back to at least 2007 in Inventor Fusion. This feature is so ubiquitous you don't even think about it not being there- that it's not is unbelievable!! I'm left without words...and without hotkeys. 😞

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-fusion/custom-shortcut-keys/td-p/2958004

[Anonymous]

+1

It's essential to be able to customize your application! Nowadays the speed of modeling is VERY important.

[Anonymous]

Please add me to the list of users that would also like to have a customizable list of hotkeys - particularly for the views, scrolling, and angeling parts (mouse3). Thank you for your program so far.

[cekuhnen]

@jeff_strater

I followed the UI discussion since a very long time.

It seems to me that very often it occurred that the team tried to predict what users wanted but ultimately the delivered UI did not meet that assumption.

I grew up with 3D since I am 14 so I saw over my life time quite an amount of programs and UI approaches.

Truth is each one has ups and downs.

But I feel Fusion's main flaw is inconsistency.

The marking menu is implemented in a limited way like key short cuts

The S menu is actually pretty great while it cannot house constraints which are put into a screen space wasting palette

Regarding the tabs and menus to limit mouse movements why dont you simply spawn the dialog like for Extrude Solid 

right where the mouse courser is like the S tool-shelf.

What I try to say is that you need to only streamline Fusions UI to make it very effective but it seems this rather overthought

and your end and drags out incredibly long.

In the end I would provide users a UI you find they should use meaning you need to lead here.

[Anonymous]

There was a post some time ago with a user posted script for use with Auto Hotkey. I have found it to be a stop gap until Autodesk wraps this functionality in natively. Search for Auto Hotkey it should come up.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff, good to hear that customizing is in the works, but could you do me (and probably the entire AutoCAD versed population) a tiny lil favor until then and make the 'A' hot key draw a bloody arc when in a sketch instead of stopping the sketch, randomly panning like a drunk on crack, and opening the Appearance menu?  It's driving me absolutely nuts and I still use AutoCAD so breaking the habit of 'A' means 'Arc' is not just out of the question, it's actually impossible!

Thanks in advance for your hard work! 

[busycleta]

Hi @jeff_strater 

I began to research the subject of "cycling through the dialogue" without running the mouse all over the big screen all the time and losing focus on the selection. Every Engineer coming from any other CAD will see this as the biggest distraction. Thats why the forums are packed with requests for this.

So far I have not found a solution in F360, I even contracted an add-in builder and he could not draft a possible way to get this fixed. Also with Auto Hotkey, so far no luck...

However

There is a very easy fix and it will not mess with the already built in TAB functionality
(e.g. changing the draft angle on an extrude etc.. )


By Pressing the middle mouse Button, Focus will jump to the next section of the dialogue.
It can also be used to confirm "OK" at the end of the process. This solution is intuitive and other Programs like NX use it and the gain in workflow is enormous.

Please let us know, when the solution is expected to be implemented and for the meantime, how can this be hacked with the help of add-in's or other external functionality?

Many thanks

[jeff_strater]

we do not have any plans today to address this, unfortunately.  It's just not that high of a priority right now.  There is no way to hack it that I am aware of, sorry.

[busycleta]

@jeff_strater  hi, thanks for the reply, however I do not understand, how did you move down the severity of this, the forum is full of requests for it, people have placed it in ER, understandably, every CAD System has this, it is tedious to not have it.
I also proposed, as many others did, very "low hanging fruit" style solutions, so please have the discussion with your PM's put it back to the top of the queue, just because the solution is an easy fix does not mean the issue is not severe. At least allow me to know how I can create a hotfix for this, every other windows, even web browser app has this behavior as expected..

thank you

[yirang.choe]

My team is currently gathering some feedback around Fusion's keyboard experience (using the keyboard to navigate through the dialog). If interested, please take the survey using this link!: https://autodeskfeedback.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_51QFsl8AY5lKxds

Thank you.