If left click is going to be the way to select now...

What happens to the 3D cursor?

Whoever said that left click is ever going to be default?

I’ve used left-click selection in Blender for about 5 years now, it just reverses the “place cursor” command to right-click instead.

I’m sure it’s not beyound the mental and technical capacity of the development team to actually change it to another shortcut. A mouse has more than one button any most keyboards have lots of other letter/numbers/modifier keys to use.

@Richard
Yeah I was also thinking about that,
Maybe set it to CTRL + left click?

Actually, i think my mouse has about 6 buttons or so.
I rarely use them all, but it might be an idea to be able to use the other buttons as well.

Or how about a special blender keyboard / penpad

I think the RMB click will stay as well as all the associated workflow in it including the 3d cursor. There’s a whole army of Blender users that will strongly oppose changing it.

This thread exemplifies the opposition to change. There will be more of these threads.

People who want alternatives just have to hope that the devs provide customization options to make the transition rock solid.

There’s simply no sense in changing what people are accustomed to.

I understand that when people are used to a workflow, they’ll begin to assume that everything was perfectly designed. Why, because they’re used to it. They’ll assume that there’s no other alternative. Bear in mind that Blender’s workflow was crafted in the olden days where the mouse has only two buttons. Just imagine if Blender is developed today?

In modeling, the 3d cursor is meaningless to me. It’s not even a sensible workflow. Clicking RMB first to add a cube at a specific location, for example, is a waste of click.

The more intuitive workflow that make sense is:

  1. Click the cube icon (or its shortcut)

  2. Point your cursor to where you want it.
    3, First click is the location. Here the default size could naturally be 1 x 1 x 1 in whatever unit it is defaulted. The orientation should aligned to the most parallel view.

  3. If you drag it should either:

a. Scale, where the 2nd click to the drag should give you your cube.
b. Form the base of the cube where the 2nd click will produce a rectangle. Then mouse movement would provide a dynamic height, then click would produce the height of the cube.

Something like that.

3, First click is the location.

This will only give a location in the plane of the viewport. How would you specify depth?

Yes, plan is to change to left-select as default. There was never really made an ‘official’ decision about it, but almost everyone agrees on it. It’s not certain yet where the cursor shortcut will land or if we’ll get something like a RMB menu.

More info here: https://developer.blender.org/T37420

This question makes no sense to me. The 3d cursor doesn’t give you depth either. What am I missing?

It does give you depth, open the ‘n’ panel in the viewport in the 3d cursor menu you will notice that it has three co-ordinates not two.

I always wondered why do you need the 3d cursor on a mouse button? Iv’e never used it with a mouse click before I just snap it to vertices when needed (that I do a lot!).
still, I wouldn’t like to see the 3d cursor go it’s very nice to have a temporary point available at any time it helps a lot on architectural scenes…

The option I presented doesn’t restrict you from using the n panel. That’s a normal standard in all applications anyway. All of them have N panels, 3ds max, modo, Maya, Cinema 4d, you name it.

One would have to wonder why all these users of other apps able to live without a 3d cursor.

I first came to Blender about two years ago from a long time of the more mainstream apps in the industry.
I sort of like the workflow so far.

The 3D cursor is a great tool once used at its full potential. It’s especially invaluable in character rigging.

This is great news.

In other 3D apps I used before blender, the process of selecting was often frustrated by one simple behavior: if you click on “nothing” in the 3D window, it deselected whatever you already had selected. You could spend lots of time re-selecting, saving selections sets, etc. just to avoid this. Blender and Wings3D were among the first tools that didn’t automatically deselect when you clicked. I think Hash’s Animation:Master eventually adopted that. The others, I don’t know well enough now to recall.

That’s another thing I like about blender. I don’t much care which mouse button is the magic select button as long as I can change it. What matters is that it keeps stuff selected when I click the empty space.

The don’t know what they are missing, you can’t miss what you never had.

it should be possible to hide the cursor -reduce the visual clutter.

Please excuse me and I don’t intend any offense, but knowing that the LMB/RMB topic is one of the evergreen discussions here on BA with high potential for polarization I wonder who “almost everyone” is? Is it almost everyone among the developers? Is it almost everyone among the users?

I’m confident that the solution will have a good usability in the end and that the user base will learn to get accustomed to whatever it will be, perhaps with 2.8. And I see good and valid arguments for both buttons. But again, looking at the link in #9, I see an ongoing discussion and no decision.

@Blend

Cinema 4d and modo have 3d cursors, they are just called workplanes.

Oh and maybe this is just personal preference but eh…
I hate them, I just do, it’s disorienting for some reason

Objectively speaking they are technically better than 3d cursors since they can also capture rotation of a polygon/edge but I just really couldn’t bring myself to like them.

Ditto that 100%, its the worst thing about both those 3d apps,I think for that reason, Maya is the easiest to use, even if it has slowdowns in using the right click radial menu for me at least, a very distrcting problem for maya, not unlike BLenders slow viewport,being worked on finally, which is great news , then I could use blender again for editing my mesh , that atm is in the 350k range, and not it can’t be multi resh, because while I started it in blender, I/m finishing it in sculptris because atm anyway, blenders sculpting is ridiculous compared to just about anything else, and that’s fine I realize its not a standalone app for sculpting like sculptris is, which I use daily and love utterly.

Cheers and looking fwd to fast viewport
db