Keyboard Shortcuts
You will greatly speed up your programing in Max if you learn the keyboard shortcuts for creating certain types of objects. (Keyboard shortcuts are money.)
- Cmd-click (Cntl-C) on white space unlocks/locks a patcher
- n creates a new object (at the current cursor location)
- m creates a new message object
- b creates a button (bang)
- t creates a toggle
- i creates an integer number box
- f creates a floating-point number box
- c creates a comment
Objects can be resized by dragging on their right edge. Clicking on their left edge brings up an info box about the object that you can use to set attributes.
Connecting and Selecting Objects and Patch Cords
Objects have inlets and outlets. Hovering the mouse over an inlet or outlet will bring up assistance that tells you the inlet/outlet function. You cannot connect outlets to inlets if the data type of the message is not one that the inlet will accept.
You can select objects in all the usual ways: mouse click, click and drag, shift-click to add to or remove from the selection, etc. To select patch cords you have to directly click on one, or option-drag the mouse over one or multiple patch cords.
If you start a patch cord connection but decide that you want to delete it without connecting it to another object, Cmd-click in white space to delete it.
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