Both the mouse and keyboard can be used to navigate the menu structure and edit board layouts within Autotrax. In practice, you’ll use a combination of both. Let’s see how it works.

The main menu is displayed by pressing <Enter> or clicking <Left Mouse>. Selections within the menu are then made either with mouse movement or with the arrow keys. To exit the menu at any point, hit <Esc> or click <Right Mouse>.

It is also possible to navigate the menus by simply keying in the first character of the desired entry. For example, pressing <F> <Q> <Y> in sequence is equivalent to selecting File -> Quit -> Yes from the menu.

A number of often-used menu items can also be accessed using control keys. For example, holding down <Ctrl> and pressing <P> jumps to Current -> Pad Type.

A list of the commonly used shortcut keys appears in Table 1.

Note that once selected, editing functions (such as pad/track placement) remain active until after you’ve hit the <Esc> key or clicked <Right Mouse>. However, you can switch active layers with the <+> and <-> keys on the numeric keypad or change the zoom level with <Z> even while in edit mode.