Customizing AutoCAD 2010: Keyboard Shortcuts

The following is an adaptation of an article from MyCADSite.

Everyone knows that the strength of AutoCAD is that it can be easily customized to suit the individual user requirements. This tutorial will show you how to create your own shortcut key. All the shortcut keys are actually stored in acad.pgp file which will be loaded when AutoCAD is started. Once you have Express Tools installed, you will have a tool called ALIASEDIT that be used to edit the acad.pgp file easily. Acad.pgp file is an ASCII file and you do equally a good job with a Notepad editor.

Type in ALIASEDIT and you will see a dialog box pop up. Press the Add button.
















In this example, I have created a shortcut for MATCHPROP which is usually MA. (You notice that M & A are located are opposite sides of the keyboard.) Since N is not used for anything yet, I am using it as the shortcut key for MATCHPROP. Press OK after that.

Now press Apply for the changes to take effect. A dialog box warning you that you are about to overwrite your acad.pgp file appears. Press yes, since we are sure that we did the correct changes.








Press Yes and you will see a message pop up that you have saved your changes and that your current AutoCAD session has been updated. You can now use the shortcut key you just added.