typing with one hand is not efficient, unless you are left handed and can type with your right hand alone
I'm right-handed thats why I have the mouse in my left hand. See mouse 3 buttons, see keyboard bunch of buttons, which needs the more adroit hand? Mouse in left hand, right hand over numeric keypad (or do you not enter numbers when drawing?) is considerably more efficient than anything I've seen up to now. But then I can use two hands a one time.
If I have to move my hand all around the keyboard, and move it off of the mouse to type
Then you have an inefficient station setup, see above.
various distances and bearings or enter 3d points as numerical data my time has become severly wasted.
How do you enter 3d data without entering the numerical data with the keyboard?
Using your idea that typing it in is more efficient it is amazing that we even use the mouse pointer at all ~ after all, we could just type in the direction vectors, wouldn't that be more efficient?
Very often it is, if you take the time to design your station setup to be efficient.
I suspect that you are merely "stuck" in your way
one of us is and I'm pretty sure it's not me. We taken the time to do efficiency studies on station setups to find out the most efficient method of getting information into a drawing, and we measured the methods using 75-90 different operators. Some worked better than others, and others took some getting used to. But generally we found the one command was much more efficient than two or three, and drawing stuff that had to be erased later was a major waste of time.
.. and it serves you well. If that is the case then so be it .. but please do not try to take away the tools that are available and simple to use .. indeed much easier to use ...
Not taking anything away (as I pointed out in my first post) just pointing out the "better" way. If you wish to remain inefficient, carry on. But if you wish a way that is CONSIDERABLY faster, just as simple and even easier, check out the method I posted. Or just dismiss it out of hand as something "new".
I referred to the front view where he shows an existing 3dpolyline (which could conceivably be used as defining plane)
Bottom line is in less than 2 seconds I could slice it along that plane...but I couldn't even think what I needed to type that fast ....
How did the line get there? To draw the line you have all the info you need to make the slice, without drawing the line.
So
My method is "make the slice"
Your method is draw a line, set a UCS, make the slice, erase the line
Bottom line is pretty apparent.
So keep using that old keyboard ... and have fun with it
I do, thank you, being efficient is not only fun, but profitable. But I understand some who can't use both hands at the same time, we make 'em spit out their gum before walking.