by Didik Wijaya

If you are working on a project using 3ds Max, you must work efficiently. Creating 3D art itself is a time-consuming activity. Instead of using your valuable time finding where the button is, you will find very helpful if you are using shortcut. I am not shortcut freak, but in my experience using shortcut saves me a lot of time. Once you memorize them by using them frequently, shortcut will increase your productivity, because you are working using your right hand in the mouse and left hand in keyboard.

Tips: Use only the shortcut you need based on your projects. To become familiar with shorcuts, I suggest use several of them once in a while and after you memorize them begin trying other shortcuts. You don't need to memorize them all at once.

The shortcuts mentioned in this page are just a small subset of the available shortcuts in 3D Studio MAX. I don't think you need more than these, but in case you need other shotcuts you can find in the 3D Studio MAX user reference.

In addition to the default keyboard shortcuts, you can also create your own custom keyboard shortcut:

• Choose Customize menu > Customize User Interface
• In Keyboard tab, highlight the action for which you want to create a shortcut.
• In the Hotkey field, enter the keyboard shortcut you want to assign to the action.
• Click Assign.

USING THE MOUSE EFFICIENTLY IN 3DS MAX

Beside using shortcut, you can also maximize your mouse usage in 3ds Max. Using the mouse properly can be a huge timesaver as well. Usually we use only Left Mouse Button and Right Mouse Button. If you have 3 button mouse, you can benefit from Middle Mouse Button. Here I list the use of each 3 mouse buttons in 3ds Max.

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