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Cod(e/ium) requires Ctrl+Shift+P to actively engage its command palette.

AutoCAD strikes me as a fundamentally different paradigm in that its command interface is "always active" so to speak, whereas menus/toolbars feel mostly like an optional overlay, at least to an experienced user.

Although AutoCAD is my preferred tool when drafting electrical architectures and wiring diagrams, the mouse as primary human interface is simply unavoidable in any sensible CAD, which makes constantly having to release the mouse to type the next command, or F3/F9 to toggle object/grid snaps (especially with shit modern keyboards without standard F-key separation e.g. MX Keys) admittedly annoying. I contrast this UX to SolidWorks which is overwhelmingly mouse+toolbar in a way that's comparatively trivial to navigate, or Altium which is driven by single hotkey sequencing that allows the other hand to stay fixed on mouse.

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I use Solidworks like you use Altium. Any key can act as a shortcut, with or without modifiers. For me, ctrl-s is save, ctrl-shift-s is save as pdf, ctrl-d is save as a STEP file. Pretty normal so far. But, c is for circle, u is for horizontal constraint, i is for vertical constraint. I have at least 40 1 or 2 key shortcuts and usually I never need my left hand to move from the keyboard or my right hand to move from the mouse. The exception is for types of modeling which I rarely do, like sheet metal.

I've found AutoCAD can operate similar to how you describe Altium, in that pressing 'l' and enter gives you a line, typing 'str' gets you stretch, 'tr' gets you trim, shift-clicking with trim gets you the opposite of trim - extend. The command line has autocomplete. In this fashion, one hand operates the keyboard, and your other stays on the mouse.

I quickly fell in love with this interface and immediately switched to using the command line for the vast majority of functions.

AutoCAD is not like Altium in that the former requires either hitting Enter when the minimum command is entered, or more annoyingly, selecting from a slow-to-render autocomplete context menu with the mouse.

Some common commands can also be annoying when the required minimum characters don't cleanly map to a single hand, e.g. [E][X][P][L][Enter] to explode; or when they map to the other hand, e.g. [P][L][Enter] for polyline.

Altium's approach is literally single hotkey sequencing (i.e. no [Enter] after every command) which map directly to menus that underline each hotkey as a reminder, e.g. to [P]lace a [W]ire or [P]art in schematic capture, it's [P][W] or [P][P], respectively, while the menus change with ever key press. Yeah, your left hand is all over the keyboard, but every key press is a meaningful context switch.

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