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.
![](https://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2024/ENU/Alias-Interface-and-General-Tasks/images/mmIntro1.png)
To choose a tool from a marking menu:
Hold Shift
+ Ctrl
, and press and hold a mouse button. The marking menu appears at the location of the mouse pointer.
Keep the mouse button held down and drag out toward a tool name. A thick blue line shows the direction of the mouse pointer.
Release the mouse button to choose the highlighted tool.
Optionally, move the cursor over the
icon to open the tool settings window.
![](https://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2024/ENU/Alias-Interface-and-General-Tasks/images/mmUse.png)
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.
![](https://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2024/ENU/Alias-Interface-and-General-Tasks/images/mmWorkspace.png)
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.
Related pages
Preferences > Marking Menus