Setting Up Your Own Menus and Hot Keys

To invoke commonly used functions in Alias by using a keyboard combination and to tailor the menus, shelves, and tool boxes to suit your needs.

Overview

Hotkeys are used as a shortcut to invoke any function from the Alias menus. You can set up your own hotkeys with your favorite and most commonly used keyboard to menu mappings. Then, by simply pressing the appropriate hotkeys, that function is invoked.

For example, pressing the Alt key and the letter w simultaneously is mapped to Layouts > All windows (User windows) by default, so whenever you press the Alt w key combination, the Layouts > All windows (User windows) function is invoked.

How to Use

To customize your own menus, shelves, or tool palette, select Preferences > Interface > Hotkeys/Menus.

Click the arrow beside the Function Title to open a specific section of the window.

Removing Specific Menus or Palette Tabs

You can remove the specific menu items, shelf items, or Palette tabs you don't need. In the following example, the Polygons and Polygon Edit tabs (and all their tools) are removed from the Tool Palette.

1

Scroll to the section of the editor that contains the items you want to remove. In this example, the Palette section.

2

Click in the box beside the Polygons and Polygon Edit function titles to deselect them. The check marks disappear.

3

Click the Apply button. Both tabs disappear from the Tool Palette.

4

To put them back in the Tool Palette, simply click the boxes beside their names to display the check mark, then click the Apply button.

Removing Specific Menu Items and Palette Tools

You can remove specific items from any menu, option from any shelf, or tools from any Tool Palette tab.

In the following example, two tools are removed from the Polygons Tool Palette tab: Create polygons and Stitch curves.

1

Scroll to the Palette section of the editor.

2

Click the black arrow beside Polygons to see the available tools in that section of the Palette.

• Notice that all the Polygons tools have check marks in the editor and are visible in the Tool Palette.

3

Click in the box beside the names of the tools to deselect them. The check marks disappear.

4

Click the Apply button. The tools are deselected and are no longer displayed in the Polygons tab of the Tool Palette.

5

To put them back in the Polygonstab, click in the boxes beside their names to display the check mark, then click the Apply button again.

Removing Whole Menu Bars and Palette Tabs

Removing all Menus in the menu bar

You can remove all of the menus in the menu bar by clicking to deselect the box beside menu (the check mark disappears) and then clicking the Apply button.

The menu bar disappears and is replaced by a button called long menus.

To bring back the menu bar, click the long menus button.

Removing all Action Window Menus

You can remove all of the menus in the Action Window menu bar.

1

Click to deselect the box beside action menu (the check mark disappears) and then click the Apply button.

2

The menu bar in the Action Window disappears.

3

To replace the menus in the Action Window, click the box beside action menu to display the check mark, then click the Apply button again.

Removing all Tool Palette tabs

You can remove all of the tabs in the tool palette.

1

Click to deselect the box beside Palette (the check mark disappears) and then click the Apply button. All items beneath the Palette heading are turned off.

2

When you click the Apply button, all the Tool Palette tabs disappear.

3

To replace the Tool Palette tabs, click the box beside Palette to display the check mark, then click the Apply button again.

Using the Hotkeys Editor

You can add, remove, or change any of the hotkey mappings found in the Hotkey Editor.

Defining Hotkeys

To define your own hotkey for a tool, first find the tool in the Menu/Hotkeys Editor window. Click in the pink editable field to the right of the tool's name, then type the control key sequence (a combination of the words Alt, Shift, or Ctrl) followed by a letter and press Enter.

The input is case insensitive (you can type lower case, upper case, or mixed case text) and does not require any blanks or other spacers. For example, typing "shiftaltb" will be translated as "Shift+Alt+B". The hotkeys you assign become active immediately and appear in the menu.

When you have finished editing your hotkeys, click the Apply button at the bottom of the window to save the hotkey setup for the next session. The hotkeys assignments are saved in file $HOME/.Alias/Prefs.2/.AliasHotkeys.scm.

In the following example, a hotkey is assigned to the Import Anim function.

Now when you open the File menu, you can see the new hotkey for Import Anim displayed beside the name.

Removing Hotkey Assignments

To remove a hotkey assignment, click in the hotkey field, press the Esc key, press the space bar, then press Enter.

Hotkeys on Shelf Items

You can also assign hotkeys to items on your shelves. The list of shelf functions to which you can assign hotkeys is built dynamically as you drag functions to each shelf tab.

To assign a hotkey to a tool with a different set of options:

1

Open the option box, make the changes.

2

Drag the icon from the option box to the shelf.

3

Open the Hotkeys Editor, assign a hotkey, and press Apply.

See the pictures below.

Limitation

Sometimes a hotkey is already assigned to another function.

When you press Enter to assign a hotkey which is already assigned, a dialog box appears to let you know which function is using this hotkey

Now when you go to the Start shelf and click the Start tab with the right mouse button, a pull-down menu appears next to Import Anim displaying the hotkey.

Special Functions

There are also a few specialized hotkey functions that do operations that are not directly related to the Alias menus.

Generally Useful Functions

Max/Min Curent Window

This hotkey function toggles the display of the current active window to maximize it or minimize it.

Toggle Editor Windows

This hotkey function toggles the display of all editor windows. It is equivalent to hitting Ctrl <spacebar>.

Display Functions

Display choices

See Viewing and Hiding Controls on page 288 for more information on toggling the display of all or active items.

Toggle Local Axes, all windows

This hotkey function toggles the display of the local axes. This is equivalent to selecting DisplayTgls > DisplayTgls > Pivots- Pivots- and setting the Toggle Type option to All Windows in the Toggle Pivots Options box, then toggling the Local Axes Display option ON or OFF.

Special Animation Functions

Show pose frame all

Each of the pose animation frames are viewed in succession, starting from the lowest to the highest pose frame.

Show pose frame 1, 2, 3, 4

This hotkey function does a view frame on the n'th pose of a pose frame animation. You can set up a pose frame animation using Anim > Pose animation from the Tool Palette.

For example, if you set up a pose animation at frames 1, 5, 13, and 25, then show pose frame 3 does a view frame at the third pose time, which in this example is frame 13.

This hotkey function can be useful if you have set up a pose animation for several frames, and want to quickly flip back and forth between the different times. If you map several hotkeys to this hotkey function with different values for n, you can flip between frames by quickly invoking each of the hotkeys.

View previous frame

Displays the previous frame from the current frame.

View next frame

Displays the next frame from the current frame.

View previous keyframe

Displays the previous keyframe for the picked objects.

View next keyframe

Displays the next keyframe for the picked objects.

Important Note

The Alias hotkeys file is copied to the file .Alias/Prefs.2/.AliasHotkeys.scm in your home directory.