Useful Keyboard Shortcuts Within 3ds Max

Below is a list of keyboard shortcuts that help speed up workflow and efficiency. It's always a good idea to try and use the keyboard over mouseclicks as it saves a large amount of time.

A - Toggles the Angle Snap tool on/off

B - Changes the active viewport to "Bottom" view

C - Changes active viewport to 'Camera'. If multiple Cameras are present a selection box will appear to choose desired camera

D - Disables the current viewport. Very useful for highly complex scenes when higher performance in other viewports is required

E - Select and Rotate tool

F - Changes the active viewport to 'Front' view

G - Toggles grid on/off

H - 'Select by Name' window is displayed

I - Centres active viewport to mouse position

J - Show or hide selection brackets

L - Changes the active viewport to 'Left' view

M - Opens Material Editor Window

N - Toggles 'Auto Key' on/off

O - Toggles Adaptive Degradation on/off. If performance becomes too slow, objects will be shown as boxes to maintain good fps

P - Changes the active viewport to 'Perspective' view

R - 'Select and Scale' tool

S - Toggles 'Snap' tool on/off

T - Changes the active viewport to 'Top' view

U - Changes the active viewport to 'User' view

W - 'Select and Move' tool

X - Show/hide Gizmo

Z - 'Zoom Extends' all objects selected. Very useful tool for working on one particular object, or for resetting the perspective camera.

6 - Opens 'Particle View' Window

7 - Shows polygon count of selected object(s)

CTRL+A - Select all

CTRL+C - In Perspective viewport camera is created from current view

CTRL+I - Select Inverse

CTRL+V - Opens 'Clone Options' Window to copy/instance objects

CTRL+X - Expert Mode (Press again to leave Expert Mode)

CTRL+Z - Undo

CTRL+Y - Redo

ALT+X - Toggles X-ray view on/off for selected objects

ALT+Q - Enables 'Isolation Mode' for selected objects

ALT+W - Toggles between full screen viewport view and multiple viewport view


Thank you for reading this, and I hope you will find it useful. Tim.