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Marking menus

Marking menus are tool shortcuts that pop-up at your cursor position when you use the Shift + Ctrl keys and the mouse buttons.

When you first launch Alias, a set of default marking menus are assigned to the three mouse buttons. Most users customize and change these as they develop their own workflows with Alias.

The main benefit of marking menus is that they are easy to learn and they become instinctive, gesture-based tools. This means you can keep your eye focussed on the model while accessing the tools.

To choose a tool from a marking menu:

  1. Hold Shift + Ctrl, and press and hold a mouse button. The marking menu appears at the location of the mouse pointer.

  2. Keep the mouse button held down and drag out toward a tool name. A thick blue line shows the direction of the mouse pointer.

  3. Release the mouse button to choose the highlighted tool.

  4. Optionally, move the cursor over the icon to open the tool settings window.

Customize marking menus

Marking menus are customized using the Preferences > Marking Menus >Marking Menu Editor.

  • The middle mouse button is used to drag tools from the palette and menu and to reorganize the locations of tools on the radial layout.

  • Double-click on the tool in the Marking Menu Editor to change it's settings.

  • Use Ctrl + double-click on the tool in the Marking Menu Editor to change the name of the tool as it appears on the pop-up marking menu.

In the Marking Menu Editor, you can select the style (text or icons), create and rename new marking menus.

Any changes you make to the marking menus are saved on exit as part of the Preferences. They are also saved in the new preference profile that it created and saved.

Marking Menu Sets and Workspaces

Many users have only one marking menu. They will customize the default marking menu, which are saved with your user preferences.

If you are using different workspaces, you can choose to have the same or different marking menus in each one.

The default Alias interface has four workspaces set up. The Default, Visualization and Markup workspaces all use the default marking menu set. The Subdivision workspace uses the Subdiv marking menu set.

When you switch to a workspace, the active marking menu set displays with a blue checkmark on the Preferences > Marking Menus list. Use this list to select a different marking menu for your workspace if required.

Four marking menu sets are provided as default:

  • Default Marking Menus - An updated default marking menu for Alias 2024 that includes transform and visibility tools. Used in the Default, Visualization and Markup workspaces.
  • Classic Marking Menus - Alias 2023 default marking menu set.
  • Modeling Marking Menus - Alias 2023 modeling workflow marking menu set.
  • Subdiv Marking Menus - The marking menu set used in the Subdivision workspace.

These will typically be modified and adapted by users to suit their workflows.

Change the marking menu clutch keys (Shift+Ctrl)

The default marking menu keys can be changed from Shift + Ctrl using the Preferences > Clutch Keys Editor

Preferences > Marking Menus

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