Table of Contents

Keyboard-Only Control (Mouseless QET)

The one real gap: placing a new element still needs a mouse
Navigating menus without a mouse
Working with what's already on the diagram
Adding shapes and text to a diagram
Duplicating an existing element without a mouse
File and window management
The Collections panel
Element Editor (editing a symbol's own drawing)
Title Block Editor (editing a .titleblock template)
Changing a shortcut
What still needs a mouse
See also

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Keyboard-Only Control (Mouseless QET)

Everything on this page was checked directly against the source (ShortcutManager's registry, the menu-construction code, and the diagram/element editors' keyPressEvent() handlers), not assumed from the UI. Where a table gives a key combination, it's the platform-neutral Qt default, written as Ctrl — Qt maps that to Cmd automatically on macOS, so read every "Ctrl" below as "Cmd" there. A few entries genuinely vary by OS/desktop rather than just the Ctrl→Cmd swap; those are called out individually instead of guessed. Every shortcut here is also rebindable, see Changing a shortcut below.

The one real gap: placing a new element still needs a mouse

Read this first, because it's the thing most people asking about mouseless control actually want, and it isn't fully there yet. Dragging an element from the Collections panel onto a diagram is the only way to place one you've never used in this project before — there is no keyboard or double-click equivalent. Checked directly: double-clicking an element in the Collections panel opens it in the Element Editor, not onto your diagram, and neither Enter nor a context-menu action inserts it either.

That's narrower than it used to be, though: if the element you want is already somewhere in the project, copying and pasting it is now fully keyboard-driven — see Duplicating an existing element below. The gap that remains is specifically the first instance of a catalog element in a project.

Once an element is already on a diagram, everything below applies — selecting, moving, rotating, editing, wiring and deleting existing elements is fully keyboard-driven.

Navigating menus without a mouse

Every top-level menu has a mnemonic (the underlined letter, visible once you press Alt):

Menu	Key
Fichier (File)	Alt+F
Édition (Edit)	Alt+E
Projet (Project)	Alt+P
Affichage (View)	Alt+G
Fenêtres (Windows)	Alt+N
Configuration	Alt+C
Aide (Help)	Alt+A

Once a menu is open: ↓/↑ moves between items, → opens a submenu, ← or Esc closes one level, Enter activates the highlighted item. Typing a letter jumps to the next item starting with it.

F10 also opens the menu bar — the key most people reach for out of habit on Windows. It's a convenience on top of Alt, not a separate mechanism: both end up focusing the same menu bar, and everything above about arrow keys and mnemonics applies either way. Covers the diagram editor and the title block editor; the element editor doesn't have this shortcut, since it doesn't build its window the same way.

This works even in a completely fresh session with nothing configured — verified by driving a real headless build through exactly this sequence (Alt+P, repeated Down, Enter) to trigger a menu action with no mouse input at all.

Working with what's already on the diagram

This is the part that's fully keyboard-capable today. With the diagram canvas focused (click into it once, or Tab to it from another widget):

Action	Key
Select the next item (wraps, starts from nothing selected)	Tab
Select the previous item	Shift+Tab
Select everything	Ctrl+A
Deselect everything	your platform's standard "deselect" key (`QKeySequence::Deselect` — varies by OS/desktop, check the Shortcuts page below for yours)
Invert the selection	Ctrl+I
Move selection by one grid step	Arrow keys
Move selection by the fine grid step	Alt+Arrow keys
Rotate selection	Space
Rotate the whole group as one	Shift+Space
Re-orient selected texts	Ctrl+Space
Delete selection	Delete
Edit selected item's properties	Ctrl+E
Reset selected conductors' paths	Ctrl+K
Cut / Copy / Paste	Ctrl+X / Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V
Undo	Ctrl+Z
Redo	your platform's standard "redo" key (`QKeySequence::Redo` — Ctrl+Y on Windows, Ctrl+Shift+Z on most Linux desktops)
Find / Search & Replace	Ctrl+F
Jump to an element (finds it in the Collections panel)	Ctrl+G

Grid step size is configurable — Configuration → Configurer QElectroTech → Général has both the normal arrow-key step and the Alt-modified fine step (1–30 and 1–9 respectively). If arrow-key movement feels too coarse or too fine, that's the page to change, not a code limitation.

Text-alignment inside a selected text group is also keyboard-driven: Ctrl+Left/Up/Right sets left/center/right alignment when exactly one text group is selected.

The keyboard-raised context menu (the Menu key, or Shift+F10) now shows the real, per-selection menu — the same one a right-click gives, aimed at the selection rather than the middle of nowhere. It used to fall back to a generic, mostly-greyed-out Undo/Redo/Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete/Select-All menu regardless of what was selected, which made most of this page's own per-item actions unreachable without a mouse. Fixed at the source: a keyboard-raised event now builds the folio's own menu directly instead of asking whichever item has focus for its default one.

Adding shapes and text to a diagram

Édition → Ajouter is a submenu holding every drawing tool that used to be toolbar-only: text field, image, PDF (where compiled in), line, rectangle, ellipse, polyline, curve, and terminal strip. Reach it with Alt+E then → to open the submenu, arrow keys to pick a tool, Enter to activate it. The automatic-conductor-break toggle sits in Projet, beside the automatic-conductor setting it pairs with.

This gets you to the tool, not through it. Activating "Ajouter une ligne" arms the tool the same way clicking its toolbar button would — but drawing the actual line still means clicking points on the canvas. Nothing here adds coordinate entry; it closes the "I can't even start this tool without a mouse" gap, not the "draw entirely by keyboard" one. See What still needs a mouse below.

Duplicating an existing element without a mouse

If the element you want is already on a diagram somewhere, this is a real, full keyboard path to a second copy — distinct from the Collections-panel gap above, which is specifically about an element's first appearance in a project:

Select it (Tab-cycle to it, or however you'd normally select it) and Ctrl+C.
Ctrl+V. The pasted copy appears under the cursor position and follows it — this is the one place on this page where the mouse still matters for positioning, but not for triggering the action.
Enter or a left click drops it where it currently sits; Escape or a right click cancels, leaving nothing behind — not even an undo step.

If you don't move the mouse between steps 2 and 3, the copy simply drops wherever it happened to appear, which is enough to duplicate something without ever touching the mouse for anything but its ordinary role in step 1's selection. This is the same commit/cancel pair as every other placement tool in QET (right-click-to-cancel is the older convention; Escape works too here).

File and window management

Action	Key
New project	Ctrl+N
Open project	Ctrl+O
Save / Save As	Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Shift+S
Close project	your platform's standard "close" key (`QKeySequence::Close` — usually Ctrl+W)
Print	Ctrl+P
Quit	Ctrl+Q
Add a folio	Ctrl+T
Folio properties	Ctrl+L
Export as images	Ctrl+Shift+X
Next / previous project window	your platform's standard window-switch keys (`QKeySequence::NextChild`/`PreviousChild`)
Toggle full screen	Ctrl+Shift+F

The Collections panel

The search field at the top (Rechercher...) filters the tree live as you type — it's a normal QLineEdit, reachable by Tab, and it matches elements' display names, not their filenames (searching bobine3 won't find "Coil", searching coil will). Arrow keys move through the filtered tree once it has focus.

That's as far as the keyboard takes you here — see the gap noted at the top of this page. Placing the element you've found still means dragging it onto a diagram.

Element Editor (editing a symbol's own drawing)

Action	Key
New / Open / Save / Save As	Ctrl+N / Ctrl+O / Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Shift+S
Open from file	Ctrl+Shift+O
Select all / Deselect all / Invert selection	Ctrl+A / Ctrl+Shift+A / Ctrl+I
Cut / Copy / Paste	Ctrl+X / Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V
Paste in area	Ctrl+Shift+V
Edit names / Edit author	Ctrl+E / Ctrl+Y
Delete	Delete (Backspace on macOS)
Quit	Ctrl+Q (Ctrl+W on macOS)
Rotate / Rotate (fine increment)	Space / Ctrl+Space
Flip	F
Mirror	M
Zoom in / out / fit / original	your platform's standard zoom keys, Ctrl+9 / Ctrl+0
Undo / Redo	Ctrl+Z / your platform's standard "redo" key

Drawing the symbol's own graphics (lines, rectangles, terminals) still means placing points with the mouse — there's no coordinate-entry or keyboard equivalent for that, same gap as element placement above.

Title Block Editor (editing a .titleblock template)

Same shape as the Element Editor: Ctrl+N/O/S/Shift+S/Q for file management and quit, Ctrl+X/C/V for clipboard, Ctrl+Z for undo (and your platform's standard "redo" key), plus template-specific actions — Ctrl+K splits a cell, Ctrl+J merges selected cells, Ctrl+T edits logos, Ctrl+Y edits cell info, zoom on Ctrl+9/Ctrl+0 and your platform's standard zoom-in/out keys.

Changing a shortcut

Configuration → Configurer QElectroTech → Raccourcis lists every registered shortcut in this app as a keyboard-navigable tree (arrow keys to move, Tab into a row's key-capture field, then just press the combination you want — no typing the key names out). Reset all clears every customisation back to the defaults in the tables above; each row also has its own reset. A conflict (two actions bound to the same combination) is flagged, not silently allowed, and the page's quick filter can narrow the list to conflicts only.

What still needs a mouse

Stated plainly rather than left for you to discover:

Placing a new catalog element — one not already used somewhere in the project — from the Collections panel onto a diagram. (Duplicating an existing one is keyboard-driven — see above.)
Drawing a line, rectangle, polygon or terminal — reaching the tool is keyboard-driven (Édition → Ajouter, above), but placing its points on the canvas isn't, in a diagram or inside the Element Editor's own symbol canvas.
Resizing a shape via its handles, in either editor.
Drag-to-connect a conductor between two terminals (routing an existing conductor's path, once drawn, is keyboard-driven — see the table above).

Everything else on this page is real, verified keyboard control, not a roadmap.