Expert: Shauna Anderson - 11/24/2009

Question
Hi Shauna

I am left handed Mechanical Engineering Designer and can't find a way to convert another key ie. "page down" key into a second "escape" key. I get sick of having to reach across the keyboard 1,000 a day to escape any ideas?

Also our version of AutoCAD 2010 won't let use xref's without freezing constantly. We are forced to use 2008 and want the new bonuses of 2010.

Thank you kindly for the help!!

Answer
Hi Wade,
Thanks for the questions.

Regarding Xrefs in 2010 - we have found a couple things that have helped the first is to go to OPTIONS and on the Open and Save tab, be sure both boxes are checked under the Xref section on the right.

The other is to make sure that the xrefs themselves are coming in with No Path. That has been the biggest problem I have seen with Xrefs. I hope that will help get you going on that.

The keyboard shortcut is a challenge to make another key the escape key. I remember hearing that with the new CUI it was so easy to create these shortcut keys, so I went out to look at this, and I am guessing that you have done that also. It really is not that easy!

We had done some customization for a guy and added a little lisp routine that was in his startup suite. We kept commands to the right hand side of the keyboard and extensively used the number pad. It looked something like this:
(defun c:22 () (COMMAND "arc"))
(defun c:33 () (COMMAND "circle"))
(defun c:pp () (command "zoom" "p"))

I thought that would be a good way to deal with this, but nothing is triggering the cancel or escape including ^c.  So I am a little puzzled. One thing that might help a little, is to change the mouse customization. It is under the USER PREFERENCES tab, you can make a quick right click (Left?) an enter. So if you are in a pline command for example and you hit that mouse button, the command ends. I will try to find an answer for this when I head to Autodesk University next week. But to my way of thinking - it is better to have to do it 750 times than 1000, if the mouse button takes care of even a quarter of the problem.

Sorry I can't be of more help to you!

-Shauna