Placing Symbols

Old habits die hard and it’s a constant fight to change them. For all my life when I place a note or symbol I right click and choose continue while I could double click to finish placement.

Start the Leader Note, Insert Symbol, or any other item on the Symbol panel of the Annotate tab, click on the element to detail then move the mouse out and then double click to place it.

I’ve mentioned before that I left the engineering office for about 4 years and changed to inspecting and installing equipment and starting up a couple of plants and while that was really rewarding and helped improved my knowledge I have fallen behind on all things CAD. When I came back to Inventor, Autocad and designing in general I was struggling to find the commands and the menus again but my mind had a mind of its own. After a week or so I found that my hand knew the shortcuts and started commands before I could tell what was going on and before I could realize what the shortcut for that command was. This goes to prove how hard it is to change my habits especially if in a hurry and I switch to auto-pilot letting my mind’s mind work out the details of what to click, where and for how many times.

To further help this habit installed if I find myself placing a note or symbol by using the Right-Click Continue option, which is an automatism by now, I delete it and recreate it with double click. I feel that doing the extra work of recreating the steps to be annoying enough to force my brain to switch tactics and update the habit.

Of course, unlike the right-click continue option which can be used all the time without exception, the double click is tricky and need special consideration in things like Surface Texture where you need to move the mouse out to specify the direction of the symbol and then come back and double click on the original point.

I don’t think this alone will improve speed and get your drawings out faster but changing a lot of these small things can have a good impact so try them out.

Later,

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