Basic Shortcuts and Mouse Flows

[ethanbodnar]

Sorry these are pretty newbie questions, but I've been living with them for a couple years and can't figure out yet, the support documentation from GS on some of these also seems off so I'm kinda lost, thank you so much, I'm on macOS, these would change my life if there's any solution. 🙂 

Confirm Dragging Without Okay Confirmation

When dragging things around, is there a shortcut to just drag something, without having to do ‘right click + Okay” to place the element there? Seems like this pops up often, but not all the time, if you don't confirm where you're dropping the item, then it dissapears and goes away. Maybe it's a setting, like "Don't Require Confirmation for Placement" or something along those lines.

Shift for Proportional Scaling

SHIFT key doesn’t work like every other design program to scale proportionally without distortion. I’d like to use SHIFT to proportionally make things bigger and smaller in Archicad, mostly when working on sheets and Documentation it seems would make sense. Dragged in images, placed drawings, that sorta of thing, not neccessary drawing or modelling. Wonder if I’m missing something here? Any ways, either part of Archicad, or creative hacks through MacOS to adjust how this works?

Click To Pick Up + Click to Place

Can you turn off the click once to pick up and once to place? I'm still very used to just Click, Hold, Drag, Drop without having to Click to place in the final location. Trying hard to rewire my brain but can't yet it seems.

• So click something to select it and drag somewhere, and wherever you let go of your mouse is where the thing goes?
• Currently for me you have to click where you want to put the thing a second time.
• Not good for some situations, but in other documenting flows it’s nice.

Dragging Copy

Is there a key to press when dragging something to drag a copy of that thing. Both drafting and documentation workflows. This is in the right click menu of course to Drag a Copy but that feels cumbersome. And the support docs say to hold CTRL and then drag an object, which doesn't work. I thought maybe OPTION but that is the Pick Up Parameters eye dropper tool.

Operating system used: Mac Intel-based

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

Confirm Dragging Without Okay Confirmation

Select element, drag and hold left mouse button, let go of mouse button and object will be moved.

But see Work Environment setting explained later.

Shift for Proportional Scaling

As you stretch the corner node, you will see the origin is the diagonally opposite node.

Drag in a straight line joining those two nodes and hold the SHIFT key.

It will constrain to proportional.

If you have snap guides on, you will see a blue snap guide to follow.

Click To Pick Up + Click to Place

Check your Work Environment settings.

Dragging Copy

Start to drag and then press CTRL once.

You will see a '+' next to the cursor - this is the copy.

Press ALT+CTRL and you will have multiple copy (which you must right click to 'cancel' or press ESC when finished).

Barry.

[ethanbodnar]

Wow. Super super helpful! Thank you!

Click To Pick Up + Click to Place

So interestingly couple observations here:

1. Drafting I prefer to use CAD, like makes lot of sense for drawing stuff. But then for documentation and non-drafting I prefer Mac-Classic like flow, guess you can't have it both ways. So I don't know what to chose now.
2. When I turned on the Mac-Classic option, if you move an object once it works, but if you move that same object again right after it requires you to do Click-Click to drop the object, not sure why.

Dragging Copy

Ohhhh you have to start dragging FIRST, so strange compared to like every other programs. Okay will try to learn that and make it muscle memory somehow. Just noting for myself on Mac it's this:

• OPTION for dragging single copy
• OPTION + CMD for dragging multiple copies

https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/26/INT/_AC26_Help/030_Interaction/030_Interaction-95.htm

[mthd]

I learned something new about copy dragging and dropping with the mouse and option on Mac and then by adding control for multiple copies. I don’t need to use right click drop down menu or the other KB shortcuts for drag a copy or drag multiple copies.

Thank you @Barry Kelly for that tip.

[ethanbodnar]

Quick follow up here for scaling. I'm notificing that some things still seem to be off. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Proportional Scaling

Can't get it to work with making images smaller, maybe it only works when making bigger, but this would be very weird. Any ideas what's going on here. I've recorded a screen video to share so you can see, with voiceover audio explaining what is happening.

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

Drag it larger and hold SHIFT.

It will lock to that snap guide and now you can stretch it smaller too.

Once locked, you can stretch in either direction.

Barry.

[ethanbodnar]

Super strange. Guess that's just the way it is. Thanks for confirming what I was seeing Barry. I've never used a professional design app that forces you to make something bigger to then be able to make it smaller. Such a weird behavior that makes no sense, but maybe there's some legacy reason or CAD related reason that I'm just not seeing. 

[Barry Kelly]

It is just the snap guide does not exist until you drag the mouse beyond the corner node you want to stretch.

The opposite corner becomes the 'origin' of the stretch.

If you drag smaller, there is nothing for the snap guide to lock onto to be created - so you can just stretch in any direction - no guides to follow.

But if you drag out beyond but close to the node you are stretching, a snap guide will be created from the 'origin' through that corner node.

The snap guides are intuitive and will be created based on other nodes, intersections and other snap guides.

You can now lock to that snap guide ad stretch in either direction along it.

Barry.

[ethanbodnar]

Thanks for breaking it down, makes more sense!

Kinda seems like other design programs are let you scale images proportionally as a seperate feature, whereas Archicad is using the snap guides for everything, since that's already part of the program workflow.