Tips and Tricks

Display

If you do not see any view windows, or the view windows do not take up the full view window space, choose Layouts > All Windows > User Windows (or press F9) or Layouts > All Windows > All Windows.

If the Control Panel is not displayed, choose Windows > Control panel to make it visible.

Hotkeys show up next to the names of menu items.

To see the Alias view windows full screen, without borders or user interface elements, choose Layouts > Full Screen. To return to the conventional display press

.

Choose Construction > Grid Preset ❒ to customize the grid further. For example, you can turn on Labels to show distances between grid lines.

Customization

If a menu item or tool seems to have disappeared from the interface, choose Preferences > Menus > Long Menus.

You can customize which menu items and tools appear in the interface. Use Preferences > Interface > Hotkeys/Menus to turn items on or off, then choose Preferences > Menus > Short Menus.

To show only tools and menus related to painting, modeling or visualizing workflows, choose Preferences > Workflows > Paint, Modeling or Visualize, respectively.

When setting up marking menus, hold

(Windows) or

(Mac) and double-click icons to shorten (or abbreviate) the name of the tool. This allows for narrower marking menus.

You can customize the name of tools on the shelves by holding the

(Windows) or

(Mac) key and double-click the tool icon in the shelf.

Assign a hotkey or marking menu item to the Windows > Palette and Windows > Shelves Commands. This way 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.

You can hold the middle mouse button and drag the color from the Color Swatch in the Color Editor to a shelf

Other tricks and shortcuts

Values (for example x,y,z or u,v) can be typed on the prompt line with either a space or a comma separating the numbers.

If you type an r on the prompt line, the numbers you type after it are considered relative. If you type an a, the numbers are absolute.

Double-click a menu title to reselect the last command chosen from the menu.

You can also hold

and click a tool icon or menu item to open its option box.

You can hold the

(Windows) or

(Mac) key and drag left or right over a text box to adjust the value inside

You can copy, cut, and paste text strings in Alias (for example values in option boxes) by using

+ C (Windows) or

+ C (Mac),

+ X (Windows) or

+ X (Mac), and

+ V (Windows) or

+ P (Mac).

If you make a mistake, choose Edit > Undo or

+ Z (Windows) or

+ Z (Mac) to step back.

Single key hotkeys (Preferences > Interface > Toggle single hotkeys) let you use normal keystrokes (without modifier keys) as hotkeys. To use the prompt line while in single key hotkey mode, press the

key.

Pressing the Space bar has the same effect as clicking the Go button that appears while using some tools.

Pressing

+ Space bar (Windows) or

+ Space bar (Mac) shows or hides an opened control window (such as the one for Align or Rail surface).

If Alias crashes, look for a file named wire\_M.SAVES\_msaved_<month>_<day>_<time>_Stage.wire under your current project.