You’re in the zone. Your vision has tunneled to the screen, and nothing else happening around you even starts to penetrate your consciousness. Your left hand is moving with such fluid grace that the only indication of how much is actually happening is the rapid “clickclickclickclickclick…” of the keys. Your right hand on the mouse - the cursor moving to menu items before the menu has even opened. The only thing slowing YOU down is your 4Ghz dual core, water-cooled CPU.
Then it happens.
The universe stops expanding.
Our galaxy stops spiraling.
Earth stops dead in it’s tracks.
The sun hides behind a heavy, gray cloud.
The birds outside instantly go silent.
You stare at the screen in horror. In the midst of your finger gymnastics, you slightly miscalculated the position of your finger, and instead of hitting “escape,” you hit “f1.”
And the world froze.
The only break in the eerie silence is the sound of your hard-drive, loading what must be terabytes of data to start up AutoCAD’s Help file.
A second ticks by. The universe is holding it’s breath.
Still the hard-drive whirs away.
Another second. An animal-like rage wells up inside you. The cursor jumps spatistically on the screen as you whip the mouse back and forth, trying desperately to regain control.
Denied.
Another second.
You grimace at the screen, grinding your teeth, kicking the wall underneath the desk.
Finally - the Help window pops up. Before it has even fully displayed, you’ve clicked the close button a dozen times.
A few milliseconds later, AutoCAD is back under your command. But it’s too late. Your drafter’s spirit has been crushed, and you spend the rest of the day hitting “refresh” on your email inbox.
***
Don’t let this happen to you again.
The F1 fix for AutoCAD 2005-
The F1 fix for AutoCAD 2006+
I know this is a big issue for a lot of people, but it’s never been a problem for me. I keyboard with my left hand & I know the esc key is the first key in the top row when approached from the left (having my number pad on the left helps too). That being said - my issue is with the help question mark being so close to the “x” that closes a dialog box. I’ve clicked that “?” by mistake more than once.