Why doesn't my alt key work when i want to copy a component ?how can i activate it?

why doesn’t my alt key work when i want to copy a component in grasshopper?how can i activate it?

If you tap Alt you should see a white box instead of the component. Then let go somewhere to place a copy of the component. Don’t hold Alt, just press it once to active copy mode, once again to deactivate.

Trying to follow your directions (no luck using ALT to copy?), I accidentally discovered the split canvas feature with “Tap ALT to toggle separation direction” tooltip hint. So the canvas can be split horizontally or vertically to create more space between components on either side of the split… That would be useful if its effect were limited to selected components, but splitting the ENTIRE CANVAS disrupts adjacent groups of code that I don’t want to touch.

This is what I get, although I admit Alt is a bit of a risky key since it’s so tied to menus in Windows.

Now I get it. Tap ALT while dragging a component drops a copy.

The split canvas feature works the same way for me. On a busy canvas, its effect is too far reaching, disrupting code far away from the “work area”.