Figma CAD shortcuts ideas
Figma shortcut ideas inspired by apps like Blender, Fusion360 and KiCad.
G: Grab
Press G (grab): move selected layer. Move the cursor to move the layer around without needing to hold the right mouse button. And without the need to hover over the selected element to move it — the mouse cursor will snap to it automatically (or you can drag a layer at an offset too). You can use arrow keys too while the Move mode is active. To cancel the move press Esc or RMB and to confirm press Enter or left mouse button. If nothing is selected when G is pressed, hovered layer is automatically selected. Here are the examples of how these commands work in Blender (2 minutes):
Alternatively, a simpler suggestion is to simply focus on the position inputs when G is pressed so you can enter the position precisely. Not as versatile but can be useful similar to how the Scale tool enables focus on the scale input when you press K.
X: Delete
Press X: delete selected layer or layer that is hovered when nothing is selected. This is easier than Delete as it's on the left side of the keyboard.
F, R, O, etc: Frame, Rectangle and other shapes
Frame tool: press F. If you hold left click and drag, it works like normal. But if you just click, instead of creating a default 100x100 frame like now, it allows you to drag the size of the frame without holding the mouse, similar to the G shortcut. Same behavior is expected with other tools like rectangles, lines, etc. With circles you would input the diameter. Similar to Fusion360, you can also see dimensions right on the frame sides instead of the right panel and you can change them by simply typing the numbers and hitting Tab to switch the side. Example at 1:00 mark (20 seconds):
D: Drag
Press D for Drag. Works similar to G, but instead allows you to drag the closest corner/control point or side of the selected/hovered object to resize it. This allows you to be less precise with the mouse as you don't have to hover the corner exactly but just get close to it and hitting D would snap your cursor to the closest corner or edge. This is inspired by KiCad Drag action: it works differently there but that's how I would adapt it to Figma.
A: Appearance
Press A to focus on the Fill/Stroke and open the color/style picker in place. You can press Tab to go between style/color picker. In style picker the search is in focus so you can type the color name and press enter or you can use arrow keys to navigate the styles menu. Pressing F and S while in the Appearance mode would apply the focused style to Fill or Stroke respectively. Pressing Enter would apply it to Fill by default and to Stroke if the object only has stroke and no Fill.
R: Rotate
Press R to rotate clockwise and Shift + R to rotate counterclockwise. You can adjust the rotation amount in the Nudge preferences, default is 90°.
Z: Pan and Zoom
You can already hold Z and use arrow keys to pan around the canvas but maybe you can go further: press Z to activate zoom mode, use WASD keys to move around the canvas, use Q and E to zoom in or out. This can be useful to be able to do it all with one hand without moving your right hand from the mouse to the keyboard.
Plus, I think similar to holding the Z key, holding Spacebar for Pan should also give you the ability to move around with arrow keys. Why is it not a thing?
S: Select Mode
Allows you to select things easily. First, you can configure the selection zone behavior: does it include only the objects it fully encloses or also the objects it intersects with? Second, the selection can have multiple modes: box, brush and lasso.
- Box: simply drag the selection box around like normal.
- Brush: draw with a brush and every object the brush stroke intersects with will be selected.
- Lasso: draw a custom shape around the objects you want to select.
Not sure if these modes would make much sense in Figma as usually the selections are pretty “boxy”.