Hot Key Commands Vs Selecting Toolbar Commands.

[matthew.113087]

Just curious as to peoples opinions, a work mate has moved to Australia and got a shock when he started his first day at work as it was apparently company policy to use the command line rather than the Select buttons on the Toolbars to perform commands. He now believes this is far better than what we currently do in this office (Use customized toolbars).

I'm just curious as to what other firms prefer to use & what the Pro's & Cons of each are.
Is it worth changing what we are doing?

Any input would be appreciated.

Cheers

[ccowgill]

studies have shown that when you use the keyboard and the mouse, effecincy significantly improves. just think about the time that it takes to move your mouse up, click a button and come back to the drawing window, compared to keying in a simple alias. I dont think that I would force people to choose one or the other. At my office, I am the only one who seems to keyboard anything, so for our custom routines, I made a compromise, I created a pull down menu, I refused to create a toolbar, as I believed it would seem like I was approving of using toolbars

[arshiel88]

I use combination but I greatly appreciate the advantage of using the command line. Its definitely faster in most cases and maximizes the work area, getting rid of space consuming toolbars. Now that even the command line can be hidden, "experts" as they call themselves removes everything (command line, toolbars, tool palletes etc.etc) when they are in 'expert mode'.

It really depends on the user. In my case, I do a lot of 3d modeling thats why my Solids Editing toolbar is always available.These commands are nested (3 commands deep at least, of course except the undo and exit.) and I find it easier to use the toolbars than typing at the command line, unless otherwise assigned to a keyboard shortcut or macro.

[framedNlv]

I have been at the same place for over seven years and it really depends on the person.

Most of my frequent commands are keyboard but everything is put on a toobar for the new people. I did put in a quote on the toolbars for the keyboard commands reference (type "L" for line or "d" for dtext). Most useful is the "Q" "spacebar" for quick save (qsave).

Chris
PS, most of my commands are on the left side of the keyboard so I don't have to move my hand far.

[arshiel88]

For other users' sake, I keep my default keyboard shortcuts as much as possible. say "E" is for Erase not for Extend, "C" is for Circle not for Copy, and so on.
When I was a beginner, I had an exam in AutoCAD in an Architectural firm and the keyboard shortcuts are messed up (in my POV) to the point that I ended up typing the whole command instead of the shortcut since the shortcut I know ended up running a different command or it just didnt work....Of course it will be slower...as a result I failed.
But that was long ago. Today, maybe I would bring my own acad.pgp and acad.cui.

[BrenBren]

studies have shown that when you use the keyboard and the mouse, effecincy significantly improves. just think about the time that it takes to move your mouse up, click a button and come back to the drawing window, compared to keying in a simple alias. I dont think that I would force people to choose one or the other. At my office, I am the only one who seems to keyboard anything, so for our custom routines, I made a compromise, I created a pull down menu, I refused to create a toolbar, as I believed it would seem like I was approving of using toolbars

I don't follow your reasoning of using pulldowns, but not toolbars. Either way, you have to "leave the drawing area".

Anyway, I use all of the above. It depends on what I'm doing, mostly, but I mostly use keyboard commands, followed by toolbars, and then pulldowns..

~shrug~

All depends on what you are comfortable doing, I guess. I'd never force a person to do it one way or the other, tho.

[brian.ellwood]

id rather enjoy keying in my commands... i for one cant remember where half the things are in the crowded and overloaded menus MEP 2008 now has... as for tools bars, in general they take up valuable real-estate... even on my dell 24" widescreen

[jaberwok]

I'm a keyboarder too but I don't think it should be a matter of company policy; it's a personal choice.

[Railrose]

I'm a keyboarder too but I don't think it should be a matter of company policy; it's a personal choice.

I agree. I think it should be personal choice, but I prefer the keyboard. I use keyboard for mostly used stuff, toolbars for things I use fairly often, & pull-downs for things I need occasionally.

[Augi Doggie]

Honestly, this is a "Coke or Pepsi" debate. Everyone decides what works best for them in their own time.

Most of us "oldtimers" prefer the keyboard because it's what we learned to use back in the days when they didn't have toolbars (oh the glory days of DOS). You can make a lot of nice hotkeys for commands and aliases to speed things up.

But, users that learned on the newer versions have a tendancy to use the toolbars a lot more than the keyboard. It's also fair to point out that a lot of the new efficiency tools that Autodesk is adding to AutoCAD are based on toolbars and the modifying them with Custom User Interface to get things exactly how you like them.

There are so many additions to context sensitive menus and dynamic input, that if you focus on the keyboard you might be missing out on a better way to do it. Try to double click or select something and right click and see what happens.

I tell this to every new CAD person that I train; if someone suggests doing something a new way, try it, if it's not faster than your way, don't bother using it. If it is better than your old way of doing it, use it.