RAC2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Development via Excel

[David Harrington]

Please find attached an Excel spreadsheet I am using for development of RAC 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts. As many have discovered, many commands are repeated over and over as they exist on different ribbon menus. As such, developing a workable list is difficult since duplicate commands can easily get different key assignments as one moves about in a text file with over 1,400 lines.

Within this XLS - the blue area is what one copies to a true TXT file. The green area is where one customizes to their own desires. The orange area contains a list of ribbon entries but without the duplication. To the right of the green area is the out-of-the-box shortcuts.

Again - you only edit in the green, no where else.

For any given row, the XLS will use the OOTB entry until a custom one is created. As custom entries are made, they are checked against the entire list for duplicate keycuts. If a duplicate is found above, it then checks against the ribbon placement. If the ribbon is the same, the new keycut is left as is. If the ribbon is different, the keycut is made red.

In a nutshell (I may have confused you more just then), you start out with OOTB keycuts. You find a command you want to customize and do so. Soon as you do that, all matching commands below get that same customization (superceding their own line OOTB entry). And if you use the duplicate removed column for commands, you never will have to "look" at already adjusted commands.

Another 'perk' of this is the blue column will start by showing the uppermost OOTB keycut. Even if Autodesk called a lower placed ribbon by a different keycut, it will use the uppermost - thus disabling the practice of 2 different keycuts for the same command.

I have placed a couple sample conditions in the custom column to show this functionality. The big thing here is, green is good, red is bad. Now I will say there are some commands that are duplicated in ribbon form but with different ribbon strings - so in some cases red can be right (same command but different ribbon strings). Sigh...not sure what else I can do about that. When you find red cells, investigate and perhaps override if needed.

Comments are welcome. I have started a new thread for this to 1) restrict topic to the XLS and 2) to keep track when future RAC versions are released.

[dfriesen]

Thanks, this looks quite useful.

[gordons.68934]

Great work, thanks for your effort.
Could we have the cell grid lines turned on to make it easier to see across the rows.

Thanks
Steve

[David Harrington]

Having the lines on probably would be a good thing. I guess I just got used to not using them. You can unprotect the sheet and make that change as needed. Rev 2 will have it.

[gordie_v]

Looks slick, but when I duplicate a line for an additional shortcut for the same command it will not change blue column

[David Harrington]

Originally Posted by gordie_v

Looks slick, but when I duplicate a line for an additional shortcut for the same command it will not change blue column

Alas, I don't do that. I personally have found having 1 command accessed by 2 (or more) shortcuts confusing. For example, as shipped VV and VG open Visability/Graphics Overrides. Why can't one or the other do?

[Liz437]

This is beautiful. I did not even know I wanted this until I saw it. Thank you!!

[d.stairmand]

David

Most ingenious thing for Revit!!!!

Thanks heaps

[lorne.bourdo.152516]

This is great! Thanks!

One thing, if I already have lots of custom shortcuts then is there a way to update the shortcuts on this sheet (without going through each one)?

What I have been trying to do is to create an excel file that automatically updates when I change the 'keyboardShortcuts.txt" file. But this is a good substitute cuz I can add shorcuts then just copy the blue as you mentioned into my .txt file. So that's easy enough, but I am wondering if I can get around the going through each and every shortcut to get it up to speed with my own?

Thanks,
Lorne
.

[David Harrington]

You will still have to do a level of matching between the old and new TXT files. The problem is the menu structure is different - there isn't a way to copy a column of shortcuts and paste into the new menu structure.

However, another trick I used was to edit the new TXT file and replace all "-" with real tabs. I then built a column of just the command name.

ribbon:"Home-Room & Area-Tag-Tag Room"

became

Tag Room

I then created a new XLS column and colored the cells of these "just command" names. Then sorted that with a similar column of 2009 command names. So in the end I had two (or more) Tag Room's, one 2009 color and some 2010 column. Then I could copy the old shortcut to the new shortcut location.