You are always being pushed to be more productive, particularly in the current economic climate.

The problem is that “productive” is hard to measure, and depends on many factors. This is often compounded by a lack of resources available to update hardware, software, and training.

Fortunately, a few simple time-saving tricks can often improve your productivity beyond the apparent short-term gain. When you’re on a roll an extra second or two for an additional mouse click is more damaging than the actual time involved because it breaks your train of thought. The goal is to work as fast as you can think. Okay, please, no smart-alecky remarks about geologic time frames…

This leads us to the lowly Shift key. Many commands and operations can make use of it to change how things are working without having to switch to a different command, mode, menu, or toolbar item. Here are a few prime examples:

1. Quick entity snaps: Press and hold the Shift key and then right-click anywhere in the graphics window at any time in pretty much any command. This pops up a context menu containing all the entity snaps, along with selections to set running entity snaps on or off.

Figure 1: Shift-Right Click at any time brings up the Entity Snap menu

This also works even if no command is currently running, and is a quick, convenient way of accessing the entity snap setting dialog box.

2. Quick Ortho on/off: Pressing the Shift key in the middle of most commands temporarily reverses the current setting of Ortho mode. For example, you may have had Ortho on while drawing a series of line segments. Now you want to Move a bunch of selected entities in some random direction, perhaps to rearrange a detail view on a drawing. You select the desired entities, click to specify the base point, and drag the entities to their new location…

…oops, you left Ortho turned on. You could double-click the Ortho button in the status bar, finish the move, and double-click the Ortho button again to turn Ortho back on. Four mouse clicks (and four extra seconds).

Figure 2: Use the Shift key to use Ortho mode even when Ortho is turned off

On the other hand, you could simply press and hold the Shift key to temporarily disable Ortho as you complete the move. When you release the Shift key, Ortho is re-enabled.
This also works in reverse to temporarily enable Ortho if it is turned off.

3. Quick add/remove entities from a selection set: Most editing commands allow you to work on a selected set of entities instead of having to process one entity at a time. As you probably know, there is a wide choice of selection mechanisms available during the construction of a selection set. For example, you can use a Window or Crossing window to select a larger number of entities, switch to Remove mode (by typing R) to remove from the selection set those entities that you don’t want to process, and back to Add mode (by typing A) to continue adding to the selection set.

This works very well, but can be a little cumbersome if you are trying to build a large, complex set and are repeatedly shifting back and forth between the Add and Remove modes.

Figure 3a: Use a window to select a large selection set...

Figure 3b ...and then press the Shift key and select items to be removed from the set.

No problem. Pressing and holding the Shift key temporarily reverses the current Add/Remove mode.

For example, you can use a Window to select a large number of entities, then press and hold Shift as you remove a couple from the selection set, then release Shift and add a few more:  then hold Shift as you use a Crossing-window to remove an entity or two, and so on.
OR
For example:

1. Use a Window to select a large number of entities,
2. Press and hold Shift as you remove a couple from the selection set,
3. Now release Shift and add a few more,
4. Next hold Shift as you use a Crossing-window to remove an entity or two,
5. And so on.

4. Quick toolbar simplification: do you find that there are some toolbar buttons that you never use? For example, if you do all of your 3D work in SolidWorks and never in DWGeditor then you may want to simplify your DWGeditor toolbars by removing the 3D commands. It’s a simple process. Just press and hold the Shift key, then use your mouse to select the (what the heck did that button ever say to you to be so offensive?)  unnecessary button and drag it off the toolbar. When you release everything, the button disappears.

Bonus Tip: Fortunately there is a backup plan if you inadvertently remove the wrong button. Simply run the Customize command (Tools | Customize…), select the Toolbars tab of the Customize dialog box, and click on the Reset button. You are warned that this resets toolbars to the out-of-the-box standard setup. The fine print here is that it resets all customizing that you have ever done to any toolbar.

• Show the entity snap context menu:   Shift+Right-click (in the drawing area)
• Temporarily switch Ortho mode on/off:         Shift+Click during commands
• Remove buttons from the toolbar:      Shift+Click then drag off the toolbar

Also mentioned:

• Customize:     
• Keyboard:       customize
• Menu:              Tools > Customize