Changing perspective, away from Numpad

In many blender tutorials, I see, they are switching from Front to bank to front and back again very fast while working with the mesh.

When I am using blender, to get access to most of the shortcut keys I’ll have to rest my hand on the left side of the keyboard. This confuses me - how would I get access to Numpad which is all the way to the right of the keyboard?

Using the 1-0 keys just above the alphabets doesn’t feel right either. Using 1,3,7 doesn’t feel comfortable.

Is there any shortcut/plugin/hack that I am missing to change view very quickly while resting my hand on the left side of the keyboard?

Thank you.

Why not use your right hand? That’s what I do :wink:

The best option is to rotate the view with middle mouse and while in an preferable angle press the Alt keyboard button to snap view into a location.

I remember that this bothered me quite a while ago and I thought to buy an external numpad keyboard, but through time I got used to it. Now I just simply raise my right hand from mouse and hit the key when needed without even think about it. :slight_smile:

Thanks guys. Taking the right hand from the mouse to numpad feels too much for me.

@const Thanks buddy. That worked for me. The only thing is it would’ve been nice if the snapping changed the view from perspective to Orthographic. I wonder how to do that without the Numpad 5 key.

isn’t that a setting to auto-magically go into orto mode when pressing the numpad keys?

I know what you mean though, It’s slowing down for me on wacom also. I’ve made 3 script files.

you can check out the one called “change perspective”, the operator to bind is. screen.noga_gesture_change_perspective

there are two others, I’ve hotkeyed Shift+F2 to change screen type, it works like you call the operator then move the mouse, up is 3d view, right is nodes I think, left is FCurve, and down is compositor.

Shift+F3 I call the screen.noga_gesture_split_view operator, which splits the view at the point where the operator called from. and in the direction you move the mouse.

Shift+F4 is now the change perspective. Up->Top, Down->Bottom, Left->Left, Right->Right. and if you call the operator and just left clicks you get into Front perspective view.

Right click, and ESC is cancel. The script is work in progress, I want to draw icons and some explanations which helps the user visually. but it’s currently working but kinda silent. and non-configurable.