Lately I’ve been thinking a great deal about working efficiently in SketchUp. As with your work in the shop, working efficiently in SketchUp can improve accuracy, reduce errors and the time you spend at the task. In past blog posts I’ve written and talked about a number of practices that help to improve efficiency. Everything from using components to navigating in the model using the center mouse wheel/button make the drawing easier to work with.

Another way to improve efficiency is to utilize keyboard shortcuts. They will save you many trips to the toolbars and time. SketchUp comes with some keyboard shortcuts already assigned. You can see what they are when you look at the menus.

You can also easily change the shortcuts and add your own. If you compare the image above to your Tools menu, you’ll see I’ve changed a few of the shortcuts from the defaults.

To make changes open Preferences and go to Shortcuts. On PCs Preferences is found under the Window menu while on the Mac it is found under the SketchUp menu to the left of the File menu. You’ll see a list of Functions. The functions are listed under the menus in which they appear.

At the top there’s a Filter window. You can type the name or part of the name of the function you’re after and reduce the function list to a more manageable size. To add the shortcut on the PC, click in the Add Shortcut box and type the shortcut as you’ll use it. Then click on the + button and the shortcut will appear in the Assigned window.

 

On the Mac the window looks like the one below. You’ll type the shortcut into the unlabeled box below the list of functions. when you hit enter it will appear in the functions list.

If a shortcut has already been assigned, you’ll get a message to that effect. You can opt to assign a different shortcut or you can choose to go ahead and use it.

As you are assigning shortcuts, avoid using default operating system-assigned shortcuts such as Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Command-A, etc. Also don’t use numbers, punctuation, X, /, or F1. If you assign numbers as shortcuts for example, you won’t be able to use those numbers for entering dimensions into the VCB.

If you want, you can make a list of your keyboard shortcuts. Go to the Window menu and open the Ruby Console. Enter the following text in the line at the bottom of that window.

UI.messagebox(Sketchup.get_shortcuts.join(“n”), MB_MULTILINE)

You’ll get a window that looks something like this:

Ignore the “Validity Check” label. You can then select and copy all of the text in the window and paste it into your favorite text editor. From there you can print it.

On the PC you can export your shortcuts for use on another PC or when you upgrade to another version of SketchUp. Click on the Export button at the bottom of the Preferences window and saved the file somewhere that you can locate.

The file will also contain the fie locations which are set in Files. This probably won’t be a good idea if you are going between computers. To prevent that, click Options and untick the box for ‘File locations’ before saving.

To add the shortcuts, navigate to the Shortcuts window and click on Import. Navigate to the saved Preferences.dat file and open it.

On Mac we don’t get these export and import options. You can find the shortcuts.plist file, copy and paste it. The .plist files are commonly in a hidden location so you’ll need to make hidden files visible.

For what it is worth, here are the keyboard shortcuts on my PC.

Ctrl+Shift+E       Camera/Zoom Extents

Ctrl+Shift+W     Camera/Zoom Window

Shift+F1              SketchUp/Context Help

Ctrl+T   Edit/Select None

Ctrl+C   Edit/Copy

Ctrl+Insert         Edit/Copy

Shift+Delete     Edit/Cut

Ctrl+X   Edit/Cut

Delete Edit/Delete

Ctrl+V  Edit/Paste

Shift+Insert       Edit/Paste

Ctrl+Y   Edit/Redo

Ctrl+A  Edit/Select All

Alt+Backspace  Edit/Undo

Ctrl+Z   Edit/Undo

Ctrl+N  File/New

Ctrl+O  File/Open…

Ctrl+P   File/Print…

Ctrl+S   File/Save

PageDown         View/Animation/Next Scene

PageUp               View/Animation/Previous Scene

H            Camera/Pan

I              Camera/Image Igloo

Z             Camera/Zoom

Shift+Z Camera/Zoom Extents

P            Tools/Push/Pull

R            Draw/Rectangle

Space   Tools/Select

L             Draw/Line

K            View/Edge Style/Back Edges

M           Tools/Move

G            Edit/Make Component…

Q            Tools/Rotate

S             Tools/Scale

U            View/Animation/Update Scene

W           Plugins/Weld

Alt+T    Plugins/Tube Along Path

Alt+U   Plugins/[JF] Unfold

Alt+P    Plugins/Purge…

Alt+G   Edit/Make Component…

F10        Plugins/[TBD] TimeTrack/Go

F11        Plugins/[TBD] TimeTrack/Stop

F12        Plugins/[TBD] TimeTrack/Total

Y             View/Rendering/Edge/All Same

Alt+H    View/Hidden Geometry

Alt+X    Plugins/Xray Selection (toggle)

F             Tools/Follow Me

O            Tools/Offset

B            Draw/Bezier Curves

J             File/Export/2D Graphic…

F9          Plugins/[TBD] TimeTrack/Setup

Shift+U Plugins/Scale Up

A            Plugins/Add Hidden Layer

F2          Edit/Item/Flip Along/Component’s Red

F3          Edit/Item/Flip Along/Component’s Green

F4          Edit/Item/Flip Along/Component’s Blue

Shift+F2              Edit/Item/Flip Along/Red Direction

Shift+F3              Edit/Item/Flip Along/Green Direction

Shift+F4              Edit/Item/Flip Along/Blue Direction

D            Plugins/Get Dimensions

Alt+V    Edit/Paste In Place

T             Tools/Trim Keep

E             Edit/Delete Guides

C            Edit/Item/Close All Contexts

Shift+B Draw/BezierSpline curves/Classic Bezier curve

Dave

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