Entity Relationship Keyboard Shortcuts in Lucidchart

Hi there

Thanks for reaching out! That is a great suggestion. We're always looking for ways to improve Lucidchart and your feedback is the best way for us to do that. I’ve converted this post to an idea in this community’s Product Feedback space, which allows our team to categorize like requests and bring them to our product team. Thanks again for your request!

It is hard to believe such a good suggestion still has not been implemented 2 years after it was submitted. I started to use the entity-relationship shape today for the first time and I almost gave up due to the lack of shortcuts to insert a row. Actually I decided to give up now.

Hi Anthony 

Thanks for continuing this thread! I can see how a keyboard shortcut be helpful when working with entity-relationship shapes. Please make sure you upvote this idea to help us pass your ideas to our development team. For others with ideas on how our entity-relationship shapes can be improved please feel free to share more detail via this thread. 

Thanks for your request!

So I just started with Lucid and right away I'm looking for the same thing.  Since Anthony put in a request almost 4 years ago I'm not feeling like responsiveness to your customers is high on your list.  Is there at least a way to highlight multiple rows so I don't need to delete them one at a time?

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for adding to the thread. It does not look like there is a way to highlight multiple rows to delete at once. Generally you can press and hold Shift on your keyboard to highlight multiple objects but I was unable to get this to work for rows in an ERD.

I understand where you're coming from, and I want to assure you that listening to our customers is vital to how we operate. To give you more context, our Product Developer's backlog is extensive, as you can imagine, and they are tasked with developing and implementing the most critical features and fixes. So although still important and impactful, sometimes this means features we want don't make it to the top of the to-do list. It's not the best news to hear, but a part of valuing our customers is being transparent with them. Really, the best thing you can do is add your voice to the others by upvoting this request and adding any additional use case context to this thread. I I hope this helps give some additional perspective on our approach to customer feedback and features. 

Please follow up in this thread with anymore questions and we're happy to help.

I've just started using Lucid in the last couple of months mainly for documenting and designing ERDs.
Just adding to this thread as this is a much needed feature. Already submitted an idea.

Hi James thank you- we really appreciate your feedback and ideas.

For anyone else who has a similar feature request please add your ideas to this thread and upvote! The more votes we receive the more likely this is to be prioritized by our Product Development team!

I just started to using lucidchart for the first time today. In no time I was searching for how to add row below another row. I have already wasted 5/10 minutes to searching this option of google. Look whoever reading this from lucidchart this is a vital issue guys. As a technical user why I have to waste significant amount of time for a single feature. This is total waste of time. Your facilities are fabulous I admit but there is no shortcut or visible 'add row' option is still disappointing. It's 2022 and still you haven't solve this issue. 

I don't know how hard it is but as I'm highly ambitious you guys will take it as a serious feedback from users.

Hello Nahid

Thanks for participating in this thread.This ERD help article explains how to add fields in a few clicks from the ERD contextual panel:

I would recommend searching any feature you would like more information on directly in the Lucid Help centre as it covers a wide variety of topics and is the most up-to-date source of information regarding the Lucid products and features.

I do understand that you may be disappointed by the fact that at the moment there are no shortcuts available to perform this action. The most effective way to make your voice heard is to upvote and add use case context to this thread, which is passed on directly to our Product Development Team. 

Thank you!

Please for the love of god implement this feature! 

Clicking with the mouse is a huuuuge detractor from the workflow. So last millennium 

Okay I decided to build a hack to add this functionality myself.

Here are the steps:

1. Add "User JavaScript and CSS" extension to Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-javascript-and-css/nbhcbdghjpllgmfilhnhkllmkecfmpld 

2. Add this javascript snippet:

document.addEventListener('keydown' e => {
    // Check if the entity shape editor is visible
    if (!document.querySelector('lucid-erdentityblock-advanced-options')) {
        return
    }
    // Check if the key combination pressed matches the desired keyboard shortcut
    // Desired shortcut: ALT+"plus" (add row) ALT+"minus" (remove row)
    
    if (e.altKey) {
        if (e.code == 'NumpadAdd') {
            // Add row
            const upButton = document.querySelector('lucid-erdentityblock-advanced-options > lucid-rich-menu-item:first-child lucid-spinner .up-button')
            triggerMouseEvent(upButton 'mousedown')
            triggerMouseEvent(upButton 'mouseup')
        }
        if (e.code == 'NumpadSubtract') {
            // Remove row
            const downButton = document.querySelector('lucid-erdentityblock-advanced-options > lucid-rich-menu-item:first-child lucid-spinner .down-button')
            triggerMouseEvent(downButton 'mousedown')
            triggerMouseEvent(downButton 'mouseup')
        }
    }
    
    // Helper from here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24025165/simulating-a-mousedown-click-mouseup-sequence-in-tampermonkey
    function triggerMouseEvent (node eventType) {
        var clickEvent = document.createEvent ('MouseEvents');
        clickEvent.initEvent (eventType true true);
        node.dispatchEvent (clickEvent);
    }

} true)

3. Have fun with our new keyboard shortcuts! alt+plus to add alt+minus to remove

Hey David

Thanks for keeping this thread going and thank you for adding such an incredible workaround! The most effective way to reach out to our devs is to fill in the feedback request form shared in the previous comments. Here it is again for your convenience. 

Thanks again for this great workaround and please continue to share any other comments or suggestions you may have! Firm handshakes 🤝

Just started using the entity relationship today.

Wasted my time just to reach this thread.

Just started using entity relationship today.

I cannot believe there was no built-in shortcut key to add a new row....

You would expect something like CTRL+ALT+⬇ might do it...

At least I was able to find Coumba's tip on this thread because I am new to this and didn't even see the button there.

And thanks David G for your workaround I may try that.

The shortcut is really needed

Dear Lucid people: please stop asking us to keep putting the same requests in for years. Instead, please do the work. This ERD diagramming feature is cumbersome to use without some simple mechanisms to make bulk changes, which this community has been requesting. It’s making us look elsewhere for options and not recommending your product.

Kind regards-

Upvoted. Easily adding fields is a must, but easily editing fields is also important, and it is currently incredibly slow. I’ll create another post.