Topic Title

Hello, New to the board,
I recently took a job at a firm that only uses DataCAD and being a 20+ year user of Autocad, I am worried about how quickly I can get up to speed. I have been practicing on a version at home. My biggest problem is that I am used to a single key command from autocad (ie: L for line, e for erase). I am very proficient using single key strokes on my left hand and the mouse in my right. I did find a lot of info on this board regarding alias such as <ctrl> <alt> keys plus another key. But these multiple key shortcuts take my hands off the mouse and show me down and I need to look down at the keyboard.

I am sure that people have expressed this issue before. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I believe in the latest version of the "subscription" license they added a feature to remove the Ctrl+Spacebar from the process. This would allow you to setup all of the cammands that you are used to with the same letter combinations. In fact the reason for this new ability was for former ACAD users.

What version are you on at your office?

Welcome to the forum! You won't find a more friendly, helpful bunch of people than here!

Tony beat me to it - I was typing the same thing when he popped in!

I'm also "Bi-cadd" - having to use both DC (as my cadd of choice) and BricsCAD (as my Acad clone of choice) when I have to verify everything is working correctly in Acad. The one thing I had to break myself of was expecting DC to act just like AC did - but that's not fair and it held me back. Once I realized that they both do the same thing (basically), it was just a matter of learning what DC expects me to do.

DataCAD also has built-in, single-key shortcuts; e for Erase, m for Move, c for Copy, etc. Check page 593 of the Reference Manual for the complete list. There is also a section on defining your own shortcuts.

Regards,
Dave

Thank you all. I know that I will need to get used to using "menus' instead of commands via keystrokes but still not easy. I did copy paste something from the "wishlist" about hot keys to the new firm but they are having trouble moving drawings between version 13 and 14 so they said they will not able to give me 14 because they cannot move all the workstations at this time. Maybe when I am there I can see if I can fix the mitigation problem.

Silly question, I seem to be clicking the <alt> + keys and opening up menus. I see on the menus that they have an S0 exit button. Am I opening up menus on menus that I need to close? Also, is there a way to open up several menus at once so that I can just pick buttons instead of clicking to open menus? I intent to set up two screens and it might be helpful to set up common menus such as "modify", "erase" and keep them open on the other screen.

Last question, is there a match properties button? I think I could at least be somewhat productive in this firm if I could bring in a sample drawing and "Match Prop" lines so that I do not need to keep changing layer etc when I don't yet know their lineweights and layer names...

I too worked with AC for almost 25 yrs (civil) when I came to work for an architect that uses Datacad. I came in at ver 10 and basically taught myself by reading all the back issues of Cheap Tricks (monthly newsletter) that someone in the office had kept on file. They were a great help when starting out from square one. The best part of Datacad (besides the people on this forum) is the ability to customize. I primarily use the alt + key for all my commands. I changed many of them to suit my taste and use pretty much every letter on the keyboard. I only use the side menu for things like turning layers on/off and plotting. Once you get a little more comfortable with datacad you will never miss AC. And this forum is invaluable for getting answers (usually very quickly) to any question. Best of luck.

Dan

Alt-I I believe does a match all, if not change you DcadWin.mcr file located up the support directory to:
I^;^I^$^S8^S0^
You can copy and paste that into your file

You can also customize the DcadWin.Mnu file under C:\DataCAD 14\Support Files\Messages and Labels and change what the Ctrl-Alt-key, Ctrl-Shift-key, Ctrl-key combinations for some of the menu commands, changing the letters to ones your left hand can reach.
Exit - S0 is the Shift-Function 10 key, and many times you don't need to exit, just jump to your next command.

Look in the notes on how to create toolbars, and you can write the simple keystroke codes and devleop many of your favorite commands.

The good news is I have never seen a AC user not become extreamly fast with DC after small learning curve.
So when you hit warp speed the old DC users in office will be asking you questions!

Just something I have experianced over the years. DC causes light bulbs to become brighter in ex AC users. Then they can explain some of the easter eggs that Datacad has snuck in on us old time users and we had no clue what it was or how it worked!!!!