Keyboard Shortcuts

Default keyboard shortcuts.

Table 1. Secondary Menu
Key Function Key Only Plus Shift Key Plus Ctrl Key
F1 Displays online help Color Print page
F2 Delete panel Temp Nodes panel Saves a BMP file
F3 Replace panel Edges panel
F4 Distance panel Translate panel
F5 Mask panel Find panel
F6 Edit Element panel Split panel Saves a JPEG file
F7 Align Nodes panel Project panel Display full screen
F8 Nodes panel Node Edit panel
F9 Line Edit panel Surface Edit panel
F10 Check Elements panel Normals panel
F11 Quick Edit panel Organize panel
F12 Automesh panel Smooth panel
Table 2. Display Controls
Shortcut Description
Rotate by increments
Ctrl Incremental counterclockwise, clockwise, and reverse view
+,- Zoom by increments. Note that "+" is actually Shift= on the main keyboard, but simply + on the numeric keypad.
A Arc rotate
B Return to a previous view
C Center
Ctrl+Z Undo last selection
Ctrl+Y Redo last selection
Ctrl+R (Spherical) Clipping panel
D Display panel
F Fill/fit model to window.
G Global panel
H or F1 Opens Help. When a panel is active, this opens help for that panel; from the main page menu, it opens the Help’s table of contents.
Ctrl h Acts as a backspace
I Isolate/isolate only for the browser
Ctrl i Acts as a carriage return
M Turn off the menus and display only the graphics window. Press M again to bring the menus back.
O Options panel
P Plot/refresh
R Rotate
S Selector in the browser
T True view
Ctrl+T transparent components panel
U Show/hide for the browser
V User View
W Windows panel
Z Circle-zoom

Map Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can be used to map HyperMesh functions to keys or key combinations, so that you can quickly execute tasks that you use frequently simply by pressing one or more keys on the keyboard.

One example of this is the default mapping of the F key, which, when pressed, zooms and pans the graphics area view to fit the currently displayed model to the screen.

You can customize the default shortcut mappings to create your own shortcuts for a variety of tasks. Examples include:
  • Jumping to a specific HyperMesh panel
  • Automatically performing a task using HyperMesh *commands
  • Executing a macro
The following keys are usable when defining shortcuts:
  • Letter and number keys ("standard" keys)
  • Ctrl plus another "standard" key
  • Shift plus another "standard" key
  • Ctrl plus Shift plus another "standard" key
  1. From the menu bar, select Preferences > Keyboard Settings.

    The Key-Command Mappings dialog opens, and keys display with colors based on their mapping.

  2. Select the appropriate key by clicking in the keyboard menu or holding down that key on your keyboard.
    The selected key highlights in blue.
  3. Enter the appropriate command(s) and if necessary the file name (for a Tcl script) in the table area of the menu located below the keyboard diagram.
  4. Click OK when you are finished mapping keyboard shortcuts.
Notes
  • Some special-function keys, such as Tab, Shift, Esc, Ctrl, Alt and Backspace, cannot be mapped. Those keys are identified with a different color.


    Figure 1.
  • Use the hm_pushpanelitem command in a shortcut to jump to a specific subpanel of a panel. For example, to enter the combine subpanel in the Edit Element panel, use:
    hm_pushpanelitem {edit element} {combine}
    This will take you to the last used subpanel in the specified panel.
  • Any HyperMesh command file commands can be mapped to a shortcut key.
  • Some keyboard shortcuts are mapped by default during installation, and some utilize functions which are only accessible via shortcut keys. Remapping such keys to new functionality results in loss of original functionality. Examples of such shortcuts are:
    Shortcuts Description
    Incremental rotate left, up, right, and down respectively.
    Ctrl + Incremental clockwise, counterclockwise and reverse view.
    Ctrl + F1 Creates bitmap file of the screen and spools it to the printer.
    Ctrl + F2 Creates a bitmap file of the screen and writes it to disk.
    Ctrl + F3 Creates PostScript file of the screen and spools it to printer.
    Ctrl + F4 Creates a PostScript file of the screen and writes it to disk.
    Ctrl + F5 Creates a black and white PostScript file of the screen and spools it to the printer.
    Ctrl + F6 Generates a *.jpg screen capture or animation file.


Figure 2.


Figure 3.

Example: Keyboard Shortcut Mapping

To create a shortcut key "e" that deletes all the elements in the model, enter the following commands in the command field next to the key "E":
*createmark elements 1 "all"; *deletemark elements 1;
To create a shortcut key "L" that accesses the Lines panel, enter the following in the command field next to the key "L":
hm_pushpanel ;
To create a shortcut key "J" that runs a macro to find all the elements with jacobian < 0.7: this macro already exists in the QA page of the Utility menu. To call the same macro, enter the following in the command field next to the key "J":
*evaltclstring "macroElementJacobian 0.7" 0
To create a shortcut key <Shift + K> that runs a macro to check whether any beam/bar elements exist in the model and display them only:
  1. Create a findbeams.tcl file with following commands:
    Proc displayonlybeams {}
 *createmark elements 2 "by config" 60 63
       set beams [hm_getmark elements 2]
 *clearmark elements 2
 if { ![Null beams]}
         *displaycollectorwithfilter comps "none" "" 1 1;
         eval *createmark elements 1 $beams;
         *findmark elements 1 0 1 elements 0 2;
 } else {
               hm_usermessage "No beam elements in this model"
 }
}
  2. In the Key-Command Mappings dialog, select Shift from the Shortcut Keymenu.
  3. Enter the following in the command field next to the K key.
    *evaltclstring displayonlybeams
  4. In the file field, click the "…" button to browse to and select the findbeams.tcl file.