Toggling Btwn Selection Arrow and Last Command

[Anonymous]

Hello -

Does anyone have an idea how to toggle using the a keyboard button between the Selector Arrow and the Last Command Used. This was a function of the arrow key in V. 6.5 and doesn't seem to be present on V 9

Thanks in advance for any tip - -

[Anonymous]

...Except to say you couldn't shift+drag select (is that the term I was after?) with another tool active in AC8. That is, hold shift, click a point in space and drag to select anything. Just tried it on colleagues machine. Going away now.

[__archiben]

archiCAD 9 has given us the ability to shift select anywhere on a 'hot' fill polygon and over text without the need to find a node.

but your response has answered a question of mine: i always wondered why, when i watched some people working, they went to the arrow tool before selecting anything . . . seems the shift-select method must've gone out of the window at some point in archiTraining history . . .

~/archiben

[Laszlo Nagy]

One of the reason I do not use the SHIFT+draw_a_selection_rectangle method that often is because I found it much slower than finding a line or node of an element. Might have changed though in AC9.

[Anonymous]

WOW! - Here I have been selecting with the arrow and then the tool. What a time saving tip!! Thanks for the discussion.

Cheers - Chris

[Anonymous]

pdeppe wrote:
One typically needs first to select the text with the Arrow, then you must click from the tool pallet text tool to edit.

The other thing which hasn't been mentioned is after you have shift-selected the text (-even with the slab tool selected), you can "right-click> Select & Activate Tool" to proceed to edit the text (or whatever you have selected), thus obviating the need to go to the toolbox at all.

Other ways of selecting the tool are either sucking up the text with the dropper or hitting "K"

Other single key shortcuts which are useful are L=polyline, Shift+L=line, K=text, O=offset, P=parallel/perpendicular (there are others...W=wall, U=slab, I=roof, V=obj...)

[Anonymous]

Gentlemen, (& Ladies) allow me.

Major TIP No.1
Down under in the land of Oz, I simply hold the Spacebar with thumb on one hand and double click text block with Arrow Tool the other. Bingo! Text is now open and text cursor is ready to edit. If you click close to where you wish to edit, the text cursor mostly ends up fist go on the right spot as well.

But wait! Theres more!!!

Major TIP No.2
If you already have the Text Tool active and you are in the process of going from one text block to another, and in doing so having to activate each one as you need to edit it, then all you need to do is this - Alt+a.
Simple hey.
Every text block is now active. No 'Shift clicking' required for each and every text block.
After you have edited your text you can either Ctrl+Enter OR move your cursor and click in exactly the right spot in a new text block and type away again.

If I have a lot of Text blocks, I alternate between these two techniques, depending on wether I need to actually move the Text block before or after I have edited it, or wether I just edit the lot and then adjust their location. Being an ergonomic shortcut key freak has lead to these wondrous little time saving techniques. And on shortcut keys, virtually none stay the same as they come out of the box as I have experimented and found many ways to improve the logic (to my mind anyway) of these wondrous little beauties.

[Richard Morrison]

Laurence wrote:

I simply hold the Spacebar with thumb on one hand and double click text block with Arrow Tool the other.

Laurence,

Excuse my ignorance, but what does the spacebar have to do with this?

[Link]

I think Laurence is indicating that he is using the spacebar to turn on quick select, to select his text, as he must have it turned off by default for some reason. I personally prefer to have it on (indented in the info bar- arrow tool) myself and use the space bar to temporarily disable it.

Laurence, sounds like your really proud of yourself mate! Love the intro! How modest

There's a tonne of selection stuff not mentioned here of course, it's a big and very important topic.

A few other tips (not major ones though ) are:

To select a particular element that coincides with another element, be in that tool and shift click it to select it. If you have more than one of that particular element, you can ctrl+shift click them to cycle through the selection.

If you don't want to be too particular in what you are selecting just select a bunch of elements and double click on the tool (in the toolbox) to edit their individual settings. Caution should be exercised of course.

If you want select say all the walls and columns in a story, hit W, Ctrl+A, E, Ctrl+A and you've got 'em. You can of course use a marquee to narrow your selection further.

So many many more....

Cheers,
Link.

[__archiben]

Laurence wrote:
Down under in the land of Oz, I simply hold the Spacebar with thumb on one hand and double click text block with Arrow Tool the other.

mate - you can just shift-double-click a text block with any tool active and be in text editing mode . . . . of course that's spacebar-shift-double-click for you 'cos you have quickselect off and so make it harder on yourself . . . .

~/archiben

[Anonymous]

Richard wrote:

Laurence wrote:

I simply hold the Spacebar with thumb on one hand and double click text block with Arrow Tool the other.

Laurence,

Excuse my ignorance, but what does the spacebar have to do with this?

That's OK Richard, I understand

No, really, when all of those delightful shortcut keys came out in V9, I tweaked just about everything that could be tweaked. I found that with the Arrow Tool, though, that with 'Quick Select' turned on I was inadvertently grabbing a whole handful of entities when going thru the motions of selecting using the select via drawing the rectangle routine. So I turned it off as the default setting (which, obviously, is then turned on by holding the Spacebar down).

The other niggly thing was that previously once you finished working with something, you clicked away from it to de-select. If 'Quick Select' is activated, when you click away from anything, you usually select something else again (unless it's vacant space of course). Hitting the Esc key can be quite a bit slower ergonomicaly than simply clicking away from an entity, so it sort of depends what you are doing, where you are and how crowded it is in the workspace to how well each technique works.

I figure there are pro's & cons for both.

Before the middle mouse button was turned into the Scroll Hand, I used to have that button set up as Double Click. There was virtually nothing in my whole system I had to double click to open or activate (including ArchiCAD Text!)

I am giving the 'Quick Select' method a new go again, as you really have to watch what

Now, for Major TIP No.3
I have a LogiTech Trackball Marball. I find Trackballs ergonomically second to none when it comes to cruising around the monitor.

It has 5 buttons one being the Scroll Wheel (centre) and two being the far left & far right small external buttons. The other two are the standard Left & Right buttons for Selecting & right click for the drop down menu.

I have the Far Left button set up as 'OK' (or Enter), and the far right button set up as Delete.

I have found these two combinations extremely useful when 'OK'ing all and every dialogue box (instead of painfully scrowling down and clicking 'OK', or moving either hand to the Enter key. The delete key for not only deleting entities, but also when in the wondrous ArchiCAD mini word processor, I can do a quick couple of right mouse clicks and delete a few spaces (or whatever) for quick minor text editing usually though. Again, when in the word processor, a left click substitues an Enter on the keyboard (again, usually for quick minor editing - but great when it is used).

What do other ArchiTalkers have their Trackballs/Mice set up as