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Keyboard shortcuts

How do I undo, redo, copy or delete?

Both redo chords work, so whichever your hands already know is the right one. If one of them clashes with something else you use, narrow it under Settings → Shortcuts → Keyboard. Undo is always Ctrl/Cmd + Z.

Copying a measurement

Select something you have placed on a film — a length, an angle, a TPA, an arrow, a note, an implant template — press Ctrl/Cmd + C, then Ctrl/Cmd + V. The copy lands slightly offset from the original so you can see there are two of them, and it arrives selected, so you can drag it straight onto the anatomy you wanted it on.

The useful one is pasting onto a different film. Click the other film first — the contralateral limb, or a second projection — and paste there. It has to be a film in the same case: a measurement belongs to the patient it was made on, so pasting into a different case is refused.

Paste again and the next copy steps a little further across, so a run of pastes fans out instead of stacking.

A copy keeps its millimetres, not its pixels

Two films in one case are often calibrated differently — a different marker, a different distance from the plate — so the same 40 mm spans a different number of pixels on each.

When you paste onto a film with a different scale, Librevet resizes the copy to that film, so a 40 mm line is still 40 mm and every angle is unchanged. It tells you it has done so. Without that, a 40 mm line pasted onto a film at a different scale would quietly read as something else — which is the one thing a copy must never do.

Text and labels are the exception: their size comes from the font size you chose for them, not from the film, so they paste at the size you set.

What cannot be copied

The app says which, and why, rather than doing nothing:

Pasting a length, a circle, a TPA, an Angle or an implant needs the target film to be calibrated, exactly as placing one there does. CORA and Norberg read only degrees, so they paste onto an uncalibrated film happily.

One paste is one undo: Ctrl/Cmd + Z removes the copy in a single press.

Copying a radiograph is unchanged — paste an image and it still arrives as a new view. If there is a picture on your clipboard, that always wins.

Canvas

W, Z and M stay selected until you choose another tool or press Escape. L and C arm one measurement each.

H and V are different: they act on the film the moment you press them and leave nothing armed, so your next click on the film does whatever it was already going to do. They are the same two flips as the mirror and flip buttons on the film’s own toolbar, and they undo like anything else.

These letters follow Horos, so if you already use it your hands know most of them. L and C are gated on a calibrated film, exactly as the sidebar buttons are — on a film with no scale the app tells you to set the scale in Calibration first.

How do I move a point a pixel at a time?

Select the item and use the arrow keys. Each press moves it one pixel on the screen, in the direction of the arrow, however the film is turned; hold Shift to move ten pixels at a time.

What moves is the point the mouse is resting on. Rest it on one landmark of a TPA, the end of a line or the head of an arrow, and the arrow keys move that point alone — its ring turns heavier so you can see which one. Move the mouse off it and they go on moving the last point you moved, with the mouse or with the keys, so you can also drag a point roughly into place, let go and tap from there. Take the item by its middle instead, or select it without taking hold of any point, and the arrow keys move the whole of it: a plate, a cut’s fragment, a measurement. Selecting something else starts afresh.

A run of presses is one step for Ctrl/Cmd + Z, so one Undo takes back the whole run rather than one pixel. The arrow keys never move anything while you are typing in a field or using a slider — those keep their own arrows — and with nothing selected they do nothing on the film.

Flipping a film that has an implant on it

Mirroring or flipping turns the VIEW, and the implant moves with the bone it sits on — same stretch of bone, same end of the plate at the same end of the bone. What it never does is turn the implant over: a left plate is a physical left part, and it stays one however the film is hung. This is deliberate — the plate named in your surgical report must not change because you looked at the film the other way round.

To swap to the other side’s implant, change the film’s side on the Left/Right chip beside its name. The app tells you this the first time you flip a film that has an implant on it.

Mouse and trackpad

The defaults are:

On a Mac, Scroll starts on Auto: scrolling zooms until you pinch the film once, and from then on two fingers move the film while a mouse wheel still zooms it. On Windows it starts on Zoom — scrolling zooms whatever you are using, and the film is moved by dragging it — because Windows only lets two fingers move a page straight across or straight up and down, in every browser. Pinching always zooms.

Brightness is on the right button because every trackpad and every mouse has one; no trackpad and no Magic Mouse has a middle button, so brightness would be out of reach on those machines if it lived on the wheel. On a trackpad a right-button drag means pressing with two fingers and sliding, so holding Shift and moving the pointer over the film does the same with no click. Turning the film is the other way round — you do it once and leave it — so it gets the button not every machine has. It is never the only way there: hold Option/Alt and move the pointer around the film, with no click, or use the knob in the film’s bottom-right corner — click it and Page Up or Page Down turns the film an exact quarter, and a double-click puts it straight again. A drag also catches on level and on each quarter turn, and Reset view puts the film back to level as well. The right button turned the film until August 2026; you can put it back under Settings → Shortcuts and it will stay that way.

Change the three mouse buttons under Settings → Shortcuts. Grabbing a measurement, implant or its handle with the left button still moves that item. Pinch, touchscreen move and two-finger twist are unchanged.

If you spend your day in Horos, OHIF or a similar viewer, Medical viewer layout in that section puts brightness back on the left button, move on the wheel button and zoom on the right.

Can scrolling move the film instead of zooming?

Yes. Settings → Shortcuts → Scroll offers Move (scrolling moves the film, and Shift + scroll zooms) and Auto, where a Mac starts: it zooms at first and hands scrolling over to moving the film the first time you pinch it — a pinch proves you can zoom without the wheel. That is remembered per computer, and a mouse never pinches, so a mouse keeps its zoom. On Auto with a trackpad AND a mouse on the same computer, the app follows whichever you are using: two fingers move the film from their first touch, and the wheel zooms from its first click. On Windows that needs the browser at its normal 100% size and the mouse on its usual scroll setting; otherwise, and on Linux, the wheel takes three clicks. A Magic Mouse scrolls the way a trackpad does, so on Auto it moves the film — choose Zoom if that is your mouse.

Setting Scroll to Zoom or Move decides it yourself, and a pinch then changes nothing about scrolling. The app still notes a pinch, though, so switching back to Auto on a computer where you have pinched starts on moving the film; the Scroll row says what scrolling does right now.

Which keys work while I trace an outline?

While you are outlining a fragment with one of the Reposition tools, these keys do something different. The sidebar lists the same keys while the tool is in use.

Edge

Freehand

Segment

Layout shortcuts

Cmd/Ctrl + B works on the planning view only — that is the only place the sidebar exists. Like the other shortcuts, it is ignored while you are typing in a text field.

Tool selection

The single-letter keys above cover the common image and measurement tools. Choose specialist planning tools from the sidebar.