Keyboard Shortcuts

Any function in Maya can have an associated keyboard shortcut, or hotkey. Hotkeys can be huge time-savers, because you can use them rather than go to the menu bar to select a function or command. Maya has many default hotkeys, which we recommend keeping until you become more adept with the interface. Later, you may find that you want to set up hotkeys for particular commands that you use regularly. The following describes how to create a new hotkey or view the currently set hotkeys.

To create a new hotkey:

1.	From the Window menu, select Settings/Preferences > Hotkeys (Figure 1.82). Figure 1.82. Hotkeys can be set to add keyboard shortcuts to nearly any command. The Hotkey Editor opens.
2.	In Categories, click the category name for the command you want to set (Figure 1.83). Figure 1.83. In the Hotkey Editor, select the name of the menu and the menu item in the Categories and Commands lists, respectively, to add a shortcut. The category name is the same as the name of the menu the command is under.
3.	Under Commands select the command name you want to create a hotkey for. If the command already had a hotkey assigned to it, you would see which key it was in the upper-right corner of the window.
4.	In the Hotkey Editor under Assign New Hotkey, choose a Key and a Modifier for the command (Figure 1.84). Figure 1.84. In the Assign New Hotkey portion of the Hotkey Editor, choose the key and modifier you want to use as a hotkey for the selected command. You should remove any current hotkey currently assigned to the command before assigning a new hotkey.
5.	Click Assign and close the Hotkey Editor.

Tip

• Maya creates a folder in your user directory to store preferences so you can take your preferences with you to multiple computers.