About Customizing Alias

Set up hotkeys, marking menus, workspaces, and more to optimize your workflow.

Set up hotkeys

Single key hotkeys mode lets you use normal keystrokes (without modifier keys) as hotkeys.

Use the hotkey editor (Preferences > Interface > Hotkeys/Menu Editor ) to assign meaningful keys to the functions you use most often.

Note:

When single key hotkeys are on, you have to press or click in the prompt line before you can type tool input (such as coordinates).

Set up marking menus

Use the marking menu editor (Preferences > Interface > Marking Menus ) to add to, rearrange, or replace the marking menus with the tools you use often.

Workspaces

Workspaces remember the sizes, positions, and relationships between shelves, palettes, and control windows (but not view windows). You can save as many configurations as you want and easily switch between them.

Shelves

Customize the shelves to reflect the tools you use most often and categories that make sense to you.

Tip:

Assign a hotkey or marking menu space to the Windows > Palette and Windows > Shelves commands. Then you can keep the palette and shelves windows closed until you need a tool not on your hotkeys or marking menus, saving you screen space.

Tab menus

You can -click a palette or shelf tab to see a pop-up menu of its tools. This is a much faster way of choosing tools from sub-palettes than pressing and holding the icons.

Short menus

You can switch between the full (long) menus, and short customized menus, showing only the choices you want, by choosing Preferences > Menus > Long Menus and Preferences > Menus > Short Menus respectively.

Eliminate tools and menu items you never use from the menus and palettes.

Each workflow except Default (see Preferences > Workflows) comes with some preset short menus.

Parent page: Customize Alias