Using Mouse and Keyboard

Left mouse button

The left mouse button is used in pCon.planner to control functions and tools; also to navigate.

Right mouse button

The right mouse button has three functions in pCon.planner. The first is that if you click in the Ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar a menu will appear that helps you make changes to the Quick Access Toolbar (see here). Secondly, in the viewports, you hold the right mouse button down for navigation round the design (see Pan).

Simply clicking the right mouse button in the active viewport opens the context menu. This contains a varying number of options for the user to take (depending on the current action). The two screenshots below will make this clear. If a Wall is being drawn, the menu will contain seven different items (screenshot on left) and if an object is being moved (screenshot on right) there will be five.

pCon.planner_context_01

pCon.planner_context_02

If you have not disabled Show context menus automatically in viewport on the Edit tab (Settings), the context menu will also be shown if you leave the mouse in the same place for a short while.

Scroll wheel

The scroll wheel is for navigating round the plan. If you hold the scroll wheel down, you activate Orbit. This is the means of carrying out three-dimensional rotation within Perspective.

If your mouse does not have a scroll wheel, Orbit und Zoom can be carried out in other ways. There is more on the subject of navigating with the scroll wheel here.

Keyboard

Entering values

You can use the keyboard to edit the values, measurements and operators applicable to objects. For instance, use it to set exact lengths and angles when drawing walls. The Tab key enables you to toggle between the values being displayed. Pressing the Enter key assigns the value you have settled on.

pCon.planner_inserting_values

Changing measuring units

If you would prefer not to work with the standard scaling unit (e.g. meters), you can enter a different unit after a value during drawing, scaling etc. To finalize the entry, press Enter.

Entering operators

Another way of editing the measurements of objects is to enter figures accompanied by operators such as +, -, * and /. When operators are used, their effect will always be on the current value. Here again, any measurement unit can be entered after the value.

For instance, a Wall may be 5 meters long. If you now enter the string “+2m”, the Wall will be extended by two meters.