It’s hard to argue against the fact that keyboard shortcuts are faster to operate than mouse-clicking menus.  In this short blog, we’ll cover some of the useful shortcuts and highlight some tips and tricks along the way.

There is a full 9-page guide detailing all Revu’s default keyboard shortcuts – along with the mouse conventions. While learning all 9-pages may be a bit pointless, having just your favourite few handy can save hours traversing the screen – only to misclick the icon you intended!

Default Windows Shortcuts

• Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V – the universal Windows copy & paste shortcut.
  • When using Paste (Ctrl+V) in Ruvu, the markup is placed with its original insertion point under your mouse pointer.  E.g. If you draw a line, then copy & paste it, the first point of the original line will appear under your mouse when you Ctrl+V
  • If you want to paste the markup at the same place on every page, select the markup, right-click, and chose “Apply to all pages” from the context menu.
  • Ctrl+X is the universal Windows “Cut”, and will remove the markup from the screen – ready to place it back somewhere else with Ctrl+V (paste).
• Save your fingers… Hold Ctrl+click & drag a markup to make a duplicate.  It saves the copy & paste steps altogether.
  • Ctrl+Shift & drag will do the same duplication, but the copy will drag away in a straight line.  Useful for creating patterns or grids.

Revu specific shortcuts

• Hold the Ctrl key when scrolling the mouse wheel.
  This function has two modes:
  • In “One Full Page” mode, holding the Ctrl key while scrolling the mouse wheel will scroll to the next/previous page.
    
  • In “Scrolling Pages” mode, holding the Ctrl key while scrolling the mouse wheel will toggle between zooming in/out and scrolling through the pages.
    

• Hold Shift while rotating markups:  Markups rotate in 15-degree increments by default.  Holding the Shift key while rotating reduces this to 1-degree increments.
• Drawing straight lines (or round circles, or elliptical ellipses) – Hold the Shift key!
  Most markups will behave “freely” if you click from point to point – or they’ll behave more rigidly if you hold Shift while working with them.
  • Place the point of a call-out, then press & hold Shift to draw the leader line at tidy 45-degree increments.
  • Place the first point of a line, then hold Shift to see the second point can only be drawn at 45-degree increments around the first point.
  • Place the first point of an Arc, then press and hold Shift to create a perfect quarter-circle. (After placing, select the markup, select the first or last point and drag it around to close up the shape if you need mode than a quadrant!)
• Use Ctrl and Shift when editing a markup:
  • When editing a polygon markup, or a polygon measure, hold Shift to remove control-points or Crtl+Shift to add them.  This shortcut is particularly useful because the Control-point options are buried in a sub-menu of the right-click menu – so tricky to find and use.

When using Revu, I usually have one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard. The Ctrl key is certainly very useful modifier for the default mouse functionality – seamlessly switching from zooming to scrolling to another page.  The Shift key is my second ‘most used’ key for keeping my markups organised with neat 45-degree leader lines.

Revu 2019 lets you customise your own set of shortcuts here:

Once you have created your own set of favourites, don’t forget to save them and share them with colleagues.  (And keep a copy safe for the next update of Revu!)