Changes to Sketcher keyboard shortcuts [Discussion thread]

[user1234]

Hello!

My 2 cents: is this discussion for the default settings really necessary? Everyone can config his/her opinion like he/she wants.

Greetings
user1234

[Bance]

It is, because they don't work as they should (i.e. as per described in the wiki.)

[openBrain]

Does that mean that the current Sketcher tools SC's (which are Ctrl-Shift based,) should be changed?

Not sure but it should be looked at with some care. And this is only my opinion.

[chrisb]

So could we agree that geometric constraints should have single letter shortcuts?

Purely from a personal standpoint, I don't use any shortcuts in Sketcher and only a handful in FC because my brain can't handle having a significant number of Blender SC's and then having to learn/unlearn similar functions in FC.

That's one reason why the shortcuts should be easy to remember, e.g. by using the first letter of the command name.

I don't think that shortcuts should be unique over the whole FreeCAD application. When I work in sketcher, I don't care about Draft workbench. Or even more significant: I want to use the same shortcut for creating a line in Sketcher and in Draft workbench.

Emacs - BTW one of the ancestors of free software - has much experience with shortcuts and two or even more letter shortcuts work quite well. They have the notion of local shortcuts, which could be seen as working only in a certain workbench, and global shortcuts working in all workbenches. Perhaps this concept could be used in FreeCAD as well. The local shortcuts would have priority over the global ones.

Back to Sketcher: If Ctrl or Shift are unwanted, I can very well live with e.g. D prefix for dimension and G prefix for geometry. The drawback of this has been mentioned by openBrain: D cannot be used as a single letter shortcut. I would like to use D as a shortcut for Diameter, but that may be obsolete anyway, because currently it is the same as for the radius, and depends what was selected in the radius/diameter menu.

[Bance]

ping

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Anybody else (Including all I didn't ping ) want to weigh in before I try to come up with a schema?

New users are welcome to chime in as well

[Roy_043]

This wiki page was created for a topic that was already mentioned here:
https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sandbox:Keyboard_Shortcuts

[GeneFC]

ping

Anybody else (Including all I didn't ping ) want to weigh in before I try to come up with a schema?

I almost never use keyboard shortcuts except the most basic ones like CTRL-C and CTRL-V.

Any scheme is fine since it will go unused by me.

Gene

[Roy_043]

In the case of the Sketcher WB there is less chance of conflicting shortcuts. You can f.e. use the same shortcut for Sketcher_CreateLine and Draft_Line. But if the end goal is unique shortcuts for all commands then things might get tricky.

[adrianinsaval]

I don't think making globally unique SC makes much sense, they should only need to be unique within Sketcher. I like the single key SC for geometrical constraints and shift+first letter for dimensional. IMO it could be more intuitive if drawing tools use ctrl or ctrl+shift that way we know what key is for each type of command.

[openBrain]

I don't think making globally unique SC makes much sense, they should only need to be unique within Sketcher.

It actually makes sense as of today, all commands from workbenches that had been opened (visited) are loaded and shortcuts can conflict. But sure not an optimal solution.