“E” is the shortcut key for the Eraser tool, “M” for the Move tool and so on. Go on the menu bar, click on “Tools”, and you’ll see that beside some of them there’s a capital letter. They are not fixed, you can change them if you like, but how do we know what keys have already been assigned?

They do, in fact, because they already assigned a certain number of shortcuts to the keyboard. Let’s step back a little, when I said that all the guys at the Google Development Center continuously think of us. Imagine now that each of them could be a shortcut for your favorite tool not only the single key, but also a combination of them. Look at all the keys you have on your keyboard. Press the shift key, click on the wheel and drag your mouse to use the pan tool. Click on it and drag your mouse, you’ll orbit around your model. Middle button (wheel): Could you imagine that a little wheel on a mouse was so efficient to help you four (yes, I said four) times? Scroll it forward and backward and you will zoom in and out. From here you can select a bunch of functions that will help you to reach your task.

Right button of the mouse: A little more complex, click it after selecting a particular geometry and a new world will be displayed to your eyes, it is called context menu. Left button of the mouse: Ok, you’re not that kind of beginner, you know that it’s used to select an object So they already assigned a certain number of shortcuts, both to the mouse and to the keyboard and published the reference card you see belowĪn effective use of your mouse can help you to accomplish many tasks without having to select the relative function on the toolbar. You should already know that at the Google Development Center many people spend nights and days trying to make SketchUp a better place to be! This means for them giving you the ability to speed up your drawing process and, in this context, the use of shortcuts cannot be overlooked. Give it a try for a drawing session and you’ll see the benefits coming sooner than you may think. Learning this practice may require a little effort at the beginning since the hand moving the mouse is often faster than our brain that has to stop it and say “Hey, slow down your impulsivity and give a chance to that key on the keyboard, it works better for your needs!”

Google sketchup keyboard shortcuts