Are you making the most of hotkeys in Chief Architect? In Part 6 of the "10 Mistakes That Chief Architect Users Make" series, Dan Baumann shares why setting up hotkeys is an absolute game-changer for efficiency, accuracy, and ease of use.

In this video, Dan walks you through the must-have hotkeys that can save time and reduce wrist strain. Whether opening dialog boxes, snapping objects into place, or using the powerful Transform/Replicate tool, hotkeys simplify repetitive tasks and keep your workflow smooth. Highlights include:

• How to set up a universal hotkey (E) for opening dialogs—one you'll use all day, every day.
• Creating hotkeys for Point-to-Point Snap (S) to align objects with precision.
• Customizing the Transform/Replicate hotkey to move, rotate, resize, and reflect objects effortlessly.
• Tips to leverage snapping functions to position objects with CAD-level accuracy.

If you’ve ever felt slowed down by repetitive clicks or struggled with aligning objects, this video will revolutionize how you use Chief Architect. Watch now and start saving time with these powerful hotkey setups!

Transcript:

Setting up a few hotkeys. I always teach people that if you don't do any hotkeys except this one, ensure you do that. You'll use it all day long. Every time you click on something to get into the dialogue, click the little icon here, the open door icon, or the Chief setup is Control + E. 

Okay, you could use that too, but I find that clunky and uncomfortable, So I changed mine to just E. When you're opening dialogues all day, wherever you are on your screen, you're going to that icon all day. Anytime we can eliminate that, you'll save time and make it easier on your wrist. Let's set up a couple of hotkeys. Go to Tools, Toolbars and Hotkeys, and Customize Hotkeys, and we're gonna type in here the word Open, and we're looking for this Open Object item right here, Open Object, okay? 

Once you select that, you're going to go down here in the bottom, it's going to say Ctrl E. Just start typing the letter E. Don't type anything else, just the letter E. Hit assign, and it's going to say you're going to miss, it's going to write over something that you'll never use in Chief. 

It's creating an arc, E to create an arc, which makes no sense; assign E to that. Whenever you want to open a dialogue, hit E on your keyboard, right? Please make sure you say, okay, let's do two other hotkeys. 

Let's customize hotkeys. I want to create the open edit dialogue. That's E. Then type in the word point, looking for point to point move. Use the snap function in the program to put things into place. 

Snap, I want to snap something; I will use S for snap. Whatever works for you, do that. I'm going to set up transform replicate. I'm going to type TR. And put a tr down here, and I will hit assign.  

Transform and replicate. I use this dialogue a lot. Start getting used to it to move things around in your plan, to get things rotated, to resize things. There are a lot of functions for that. All right, so once you do that, point to point snap function, hit my S key, You see how the handles disappear? 

Now, I could take that corner and snap it there. Or I could take this corner and snap it there. That snapping function within Chief is cool. Once you get used to it. I see too many people trying to move things in place. You don't do that in a CAD program. You snap things into place. I want a line in the middle of that window. I move my cursor. See how I'm snapping to the center If I had something over here and I wanted to center it on that window, I could use my snap key S to move that in place.  

Anytime you click on Transform Replicate, it will bring this up where you can move things X, Y, and Z. We could change the angle and distance, rotate, resize, and reflect things. It's a menu to start because it'll save you time. A few hotkeys I like to have everybody set up. There's more. as part of the Pro Academy, you'll get my whole, hotkey list and file that you can import that was number six. Setting up hotkeys.  

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