Share Your Aliases

I thought it would be nice to have a thread where you can share your custom settings and Aliases. I’ll share mine below.

I primarily use the:
QWERTY
ASDFGH
ZXCVBN

keys to keep everything to the left hand and try to limit main commands to 3 keystrokes or less. I use PopUpPopular to choose which commands should be one key. I find it pretty efficient, but always looking to tweak. Those few seconds tend to add up.

11.9 UI.ini (245.3 KB)

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I might be missing a few but here’s mine:

  • BU → !_BooleanUnion
  • CL → !_ChangeLayer
  • CV → !_Copy_V (copy constrained to vertical direction)
  • DX → !_DimRotated 0
  • DY → !_DimRotated 90
  • EC → !_ExtrudeCrv
  • ES → !_ExtrudeSrf
  • LV → !_Line_V
  • MAF → !_MergeAllCoplanarFaces
  • MV → !_Move_V
  • PDO → !_PrintDisplay _State _On _Enter
  • PO → !_PointsOn
  • PS !_PlanarSrf
  • Q → '_Zoom _Selected (This must be a carry over from my Sketchup days???)
  • SF → !_SplitFace

Some notes:

  • I got lazy and didn’t post everything. I have a bunch of aliases for zooming that I rarely use. And I left out anything that wasn’t really notable. I can share my INI if anyone wants it.
  • DX and DY are very useful because they mimic AutoCAD’s default dimension behavior… kind of. Basically it gets you close enough if you can adapt. And I think it follows your CPlane coordinates.
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Couple of useful ones;

PO - '_paste _zoomselected _move _pause _pause _undoview _pause (for when an object pastes to some random location and you want to immediately move it to where you’re working)
CV - '_clippingplane _vertical _pause _pause enter 0,0,1 (speeds up the clipping plane, I also have one for horizontal)
SD - '_line _pause _pause _slab _sellast (for quickly drawing walls from curves)
MP - -matchproperties _pause _pause enter (speeds up copying properties)

I also have sellast mapped to my third mouse button, which I can’t recommend enough.

4 Likes

A few that I use a fair bit, with some obvious variations possible -

Trim with curves
! _SelNone _Trim Crv

Trim with the active cplane
! _Trim ip _CPlaneXY

Set surface tangent downward - to force world downward add a ‘w’ at the start of the x,y,z points
! _SetSurfaceTangent _Pause 0 0,0,-1

True up the perspective vp (I use V2 style view rotation so it gets off vertical)
_-ViewportProperties _Rotation 0 _EnterEnd

Mirror on X :
! _Mirror _Pause XAxis

-Pascal

3 Likes

My favourite alias is this one (the middle of the path will look different on your PC when you replace it with your own directory). It enables super fast loading of all scripts.

LoadPython.py (142 Bytes)

_NoEcho _-RunPythonScript "D:\PROGRAMI\Rhinoceros 7\Добавки\Load Python\LoadPyton.py"

I also added it to the startup commands to automate it:

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What does the _Pause do?

It pauses the macro to wait for your input

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how do you export the ui.ini file?

Hi Rujal - you can export/import aliases from Options > Aliases page.

-Pascal

I’ll write a few of my most useful/less common for convenience sake:

Zer: 0,0,0

Bed (Laserbed for lasercutter at school): Rectangle Pause 32" 18"

CB: Curveboolean

F: Polyline (You’ll thank me later)

Re: Repeat

TT: Untrim

AgB AgT AgR AgF AgC AgV AgH - Align shortcuts, used strategically in place of Move

R3: Rectangle 3Point

RtF (Rotate Forward): Rotate3D Pause Pause Pause 90

RtB (Rotate Backward): Rotate3D Pause Pause Pause -90

Ar4 (Array 4 ways, use in conjunction with AreaCentroid (AC)): ArrayPolar Pause Pause 4 360 Enter

PopUpPopular: Finds most used commands, I use this to choose which Aliases should be shortest/easiest to reach

4 Likes

A few of mine…

First, to note that BU, BD and BI are internal preloaded aliases for the 3 Boolean operations - no need to create separate aliases for them. OTOH, there is no internal alias for BooleanSplit (which I use the most), so of course I use BS:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I have posted these elsewhere for SetPt:

sx, sy and sz
! _-SetPt _Pause _XSet=_Yes _YSet=_No _ZSet=_No _Alignment=_World _Copy=_No
! _-SetPt _Pause _YSet=_Yes _XSet=_No _ZSet=_No _Alignment=_World _Copy=_No
! _-SetPt _Pause _ZSet=_Yes _XSet=_No _YSet=_No _Alignment=_World _Copy=_No

spp for Split>Point on curves: ! _Split _Point

mf for MergeAllCoplanarFaces
cc for CloseCrv
sc for SimplifyCrv
ug for Ungroup

s1 and s2 for Sweep1 and Sweep2

rr, ll and ii for rotate individual objects around their bounding box centers left, right and 180° (these are python scripts)

cb for CurveBoolean with DeleteInput=Used
cba for CurveBoolean with DeleteInput=All
cbn for CurveBoolean with DeleteInput=None

re for ReplaceEdge

ddd for use while in the Copy command for
_FromLastPoint=_Yes _UseLastDistance=_Yes _UseLastDirection=_Yes

gh for Grasshopper
ep for EditPythonScript (maybe need to change for V8)

( I have lots more…)

5 Likes

if you type “0” it’s the equivalent of typing 0,0,0

4 Likes

It’s about the left hand. It’s an odd workflow but in architecture actually not uncommon to keep the right hand on the mouse at all times and transfer all commands to the left hand to avoid having to move your hand over. Always thought it was ridiculous until I tried it.

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As I work in architecture, I use a system adapted from Microstation, which has a category for each left hand key, i.e. Q is for curves (QE polyline, QR Rectangle, QS polycurve etc), W for 3D, D for dimensions and so on. That gives me about 120 shortcuts, most of which I remember, so I very rarely have to type out a whole command.
No shortcut is more than two keys, and most shortcuts are optimized for typing convenience.
Mind you, this is not a 100% rational system, some of it I just made up as I went along.

I find it incredibly useful to have view commands such as hide, show, isolate and invert selection mapped to V_, so that larger models are easy to navigate.

I keep the aliases here:

aliases 231201.txt (2.9 KB)

6 Likes

This is…so comprehensive. I feel like it’d take a while to learn, but once you did, wow.

This actually might be a good start for an idea I had to run an Elgato Stream Deck…

A couple copy commands that have proven useful

C - Copy (this may have been default, not sure)
CV - CopytoClipboard Paste
CZ - CopytoClipboard Undo Paste

I’ve noticed some are highlighted in red. What does this mean?

Those are custom commands I’ve written myself (with my dear co-author ChatGPT). Most of them are specific to my workflow, so I haven’t published them.

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here’s mine-

aliases.txt (984 Bytes)

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My new favorite is:

'_-ProjectOsnap T

so I don’t have to fish around to click the “Project” checkbox to toggle osnap projection during a command.

Mapped to left hand keys:

XZ '_-ProjectOsnap T

ZX '_-ProjectOsnap T

1 Like