One of my favorite CATIA keyboard shortcut is space key, because I use this button for show/ hide parts. Another shortcut is CTRL+SHIFT+C for Collapse All (because I work with long CATIA tree and I need a fast way to collapse the entire tree). Also, another standard keyboard shortcut it’s F3, that show/ hide the tree (Specifications).
Now, it’s time to show you how you can set up the CATIA keyboard shortcuts for your most used CATIA commands. To do the set up, you must select Tools -> Customize. Navigate on tab Commands, scroll down the column Category and select All Commands. In the column Commands you can find all commands available in CATIA. If you don’t know what is the name of the command you can move the cursor over it and wait to appear the name.
Now, I will show you an example of set up. I want to set up the button insert New component from the Assembly module. With the previous step applied, I put the selection on Commands column and I press N, the first letter from command for a fast search. Select the name of command and press the button Show Proprieties… In the row Accelerator put the combination of keys that you want to use, I chose the combination CTRL+ALT+P.
Note: You also can put on Title tab the name of the command if you know the name of it.
Another simple method to use keyboard shortcuts in CATIA is to use keyboard without any setup of shortcuts keys. To use this method is sufficient to press the File, Edit, View… using the mouse arrow and the underlined letter. If you want to launch the formula is necessary to click with mouse on Tools and after that with keyboard press Formula. An interesting thing is that you can use this method to open a large tree like View -> Render style -> Perspective – click on View and after that press Y and P.
You can replace the mouse command with the combination the ALT+S in order to open the toolbar commands:
- ALT+F -> File
- ALT+E -> Edit
- ALT+V -> View
- ALT+I -> Insert …
This method looks hard to use at first, but it will become in short time an automatism.
Other CATIA keyboard shortcuts examples:
- View -> Tree expansion -> Collapse all – ALT+S V E C
- Windows -> Title vertically – ALT+W I
Note: Not all commands works with this method.