Quick keys in Drawings

[elmarcia]

I work as a teacher assistant at a university teaching Pro Engineer. We always teach the short cut methods like the right mouse button functions and such for productivity.

My question is with the new drawings style in Wildfire 5 I have to move my mouse around a lot to go between the tabs on the ribbon, is there a quick key to cycle through the ribbon?

For example in any web browser I can ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab to cycle through tabs.

Thanks
- Edward

 

[GunnarHansen]

try ALT botton


Alt and then L gives fx Layout

 

[mjcole_ptc]

Edward,

What University do you help instruct at? Just a wee bit curious. I used to teach Pro/E at Boston University who still uses it. Maybe we can get a list together here of schools that uses Pro/E.

Like you said in most other programs including SolidWorks and Firefox you can use your Mouse Wheel to cycle through tabs in addition to using keyboard sortcuts like
CTRL+Tab and CTRL+Shift+Tab to cycle forward and backwards through tabs. SolidWorks uses CTRL+Tab to switch between active document windows such as Parts Assemblies and Drawings.

I wish PTC would Stop Disappointing us.

The commands for tab selection are as follows.
~ Activate `main_dlg_cur` `page_[TAB_NAME]_control_btn`

Layout Tab = ~ Activate `main_dlg_cur` `page_Table_control_btn` \
Annotate Tab = ~ Activate `main_dlg_cur` `page_Annotate_control_btn` \
You can create mapkeys for this like R1 to select ribbon tab 1 r2 to select tab 2 or what ever key combo you choose.

simple mapkey explaination
A Mapkey is a keyboard shortcut that pr-e can execute when a key sequence is typed. it's not possible to have both r and r1 as mapkeys cause as soon as r is typed the r mapkey is executed and r1 will be ignored so be careful.

Depending on how many mapkeys you want you will have to develop different Mnemonics typically the menu or Alt Key order works well.

For example entering mapkey as option then entering the key sequence to use rT in this example for Ribbon - Table" then a space and the command code.

Tools > Options
[Option] [Value]
[mapkey] [rT ~ Activate `main_dlg_cur` `page_Table_control_btn` \]

You can either type them out in Options Dialog, or make a separate file named .pro or .txt and open it from options.

For novice users, using Tools > Mapkeys which I use a mapkey tm for allows new ones to be recorded and then saved to your config.pro or any other file so they can be used later on. If you want to go overboard you can add pauses and prompts for user input and guidance but that is not required.

Michael
(a)trajpar


Edited by: mjcole_ptc

 

[elmarcia]

Thanks for the tips on setting that up.

I'm over at the University Of North Carolina at Charlotte.
When I started here (in 2006) they were using ProE 3. This semester (spring 2011) is the first
semester we have started instructing with Pro Engineer 5.

I must say I love using ProE 5. Its all the small things that add up. Like adding references
and constraints to the right mouse button. Or the ability to chose units in mechanica.

I just recently started using the mapkeys feature. It can really help on productivity.

If I find out any other schools using Pro Engineer around here I'll have to let you know.

- Edward