Shortcuts

The keys, gestures and mouse actions that speed up drawing and editing on the Hydraulic network canvas. None of them changes what a network computes.

Drawing without leaving the canvas - Two tools stay armed until you stop them, so repeated work takes one click per item.

Placing components. Pick a component in the catalogue and every click drops one. Place twenty valves with twenty clicks; press Esc, right-click, or pick another tool when you are done.

Drawing pipes. With the T tool, each pipe you finish starts the next one from the point you just reached, so a header is drawn as a polyline: click, click, click, then Esc to end the run. Dragging from one node to another still draws a single pipe. Outside that tool, drag from a node's ring to draw one without changing tool.

Nudging. The arrow keys move whatever is selected by exactly one grid step, ten with Shift. Unlike dragging, it never welds the object to a neighbour or drops it into a pipe.

Putting a drawing back on the grid. Moving a selection snaps the movement, not each object, so the group stays rigid and a drawing already off-grid stays off-grid. Ctrl+Shift+G puts every selected node back on the nearest grid point, which slightly changes the shape of the group. Pipe lengths are typed values and are not affected.

Deleting. Deleting does not ask for confirmation, however large the selection: the status bar reports how many elements were deleted, and Ctrl+Z restores them all, including the pipes attached to a deleted node.

Mouse and trackpad - On a trackpad, pinch to zoom, scroll with two fingers to pan in any direction, and double-tap with two fingers to fit the drawing to the view. On a mouse, hold Ctrl and turn the wheel to zoom; the wheel alone scrolls. Zooming always keeps the point under the cursor in place. Dragging with the middle button, or with the right button, pans the view, and the H tool does the same with the left button.

Drawing a pipe on a trackpad. The ring of a node is a small target, harder to hit with a trackpad than with a mouse. If it is hard to catch, press T and click the two nodes instead: clicks are easier than drags on a trackpad, and they chain into a polyline as described under Drawing pipes. The node's tooltip gives this hint when the ring lights up.

Reading the canvas: hover and selection - Two marks show what the mouse is on. Hovering lays a pale orange glow behind the object; selecting draws a blue outline and a translucent blue wash. In the result modes, both marks take the colour of the object instead. They are painted behind the component, so a symbol keeps its drawing and a pipe keeps its result colour while selected. An object both selected and hovered shows the glow around the outline. Nodes, pipes, heat pumps, exchangers and manifolds all use the same two marks.

When two or more objects are selected, an orange frame encloses them, like the selection frame of the GHE Designer, with a badge counting the objects. Drag inside it to move the whole selection, snapped to the grid as one block, and drag the round handle at its lower-right corner to rotate it about the centre of the frame; the frame turns with its contents. A rotation changes no pipe length, so a solved network keeps its results. A plain click inside the frame still selects the single object under the cursor. Selecting a different set of objects starts a new frame, square to the drawing.