3 newbie questions regarding selecting/3d cursor/ and hotkeys

Support Basics & Interface
#1

Hi, my first post here, so be nice =)

I’ve got three quesetions for you:

  1. As an old max user, I’m a bit uncomfortable with blenders way of selecting. I’m wondering If there is anyway to change so that Border select don’t adds to the previous selection? I’m getting teired of hitting the A key everytime. Or even better , is it possible to change so you automatcly use border select when hitting the mouse button, like in 3ds max.

  2. The 3d cursor, what’s so great about it? It’s only getting in my way all the time anyway to hide it?

  3. I’ve released that blender kind of depends of the user knowing all the hotkeys. But where do change the hotkeys?

Thanks

/gustav

#2

OK…first of all…to get all of these questions anwsered…go to the user preferences panel and just choose your options into the way it suits you…and if u dont know where the user preferences panel is let us know…

#3

Hi and welcome to the community!

Let me try to answer your questions…

  1. You mean edge selection? You can find that at the bottom of the 3D window in Edit mode. Look for the 4 dots, the line and the triangle images towards the right of all the symbols.
  2. You can change it’s position. Other than that, it’s used as an orientation point. As you get familiar with Blender, you’ll use it more and more. You can rotate around it, scale/rotate/move objects with the cursor as orientation point and several other uses the 3D cursor knows. It’s very useful :slight_smile:
  3. Currently, you can’t change the hotkeys. But please don’t complain about that (it’s very cliché that newcomers and critics are complaining about them :p) Instead, refer to the hotkey maps for object mode and edit mode

I know, Blender’s UI is not standard, but once you get the hang of it you’ll love it. It’s very fast and not at all substandard (it compares favorably to commercial packages such as max).

Now get blending :wink:

BTW, Gustapo, change one letter of your username and you get a highly controversial name (Gestapo. Thought you wanted to know.)

#4

Border select (b or bb) will add to your selection. Shift RMB will subtract from (or add to) your selection. To start a brand new selection, a to deselect all or RMB select a single vertex (which will deselect everything else) then b to select the rest of the vertices. But there isn’t any way to turn it into Max, despite trak wrecka’s advice to just set up user preferences the way you want them. User preferences don’t include hot key mapping or changing the select function. They do include switching left and right mouse buttons, which might help with that 3D cursor popping in when you don’t want it to. However, all the documentation is written around the default set up. You’ll get used to it in a while, despite your old Max reflexes. Welcome to BlenderArtists.

#5

Thanks for all the anwers.

I understand, I just feels a bit frustrating when can’t model in the way your use to in max, but I’m slowly adopting for sure =) And I hope the will allow change of hotkeys in the future, blender’s UI is so flexible in so many other ways so shoudn’t it be when it comes to hotkeys.

And BTW my user name if change two letters you get my real name, has nothing to do with what happend in germany 60 years ago. But if anyone feels offended in someway or thinks it higly inappropriate I’ll certenly change it, just let me know.

And again, thanks for taking time answering my stupid questions.

/gustav

#6

<p>No problem at all…please dont feel frustrated about blenders interface and hotkeys…it just takes some time to get used to…i wonder what your name is??Gelapo maybe?</p>
edit:sorry bout that…at the end of the post it says Gustav is that your name?

#7

gustapo, try and use Blender for a while.

When you get use to the hotkeys, you’ll feel like flying, trust me.

The hotkeys are very quick and you don’t have to have the mouse cursor in place to do things. Like if I want to change between edit mode and object mode, it’s as simple as pressing the tab button.

Need to change to vertices, edges and faces? No problem:

Tab (into edit mode) > Ctrl + Tab > 1, 2 or 3 (for vertices, edges or faces respectively)

It’s a . . . 1.5 - 2 seconds job.

You don’t even have to put your mouse on the transform widget to move things around which saves the hassle of accidentally deselecting something.

I’m not sure about the 3d cursor but I hardly use it.

I’ve used a bit of 3ds Max at my school and I often get frustrated at how slow I can do things in Max. For example, when I try to make a human face, it bores me to tears and makes me feel sleepy pushing and pulling on the transform widgets. Took me 3 times as long to make the face than when I use Blender.

It also feels constraining to have less room to model. You can change into expert mode with Ctrl + X in 3ds Max but that would hide the menus as well.

#8

Kind of the reverse for me =) I guess speed is something that comes after while. I love max Transform widget (gizmo) espacially in scale mode where you can choose if want to scale in on axis or in two axis or scale in all three axis at the same time. =) btw you don’t need to put your mouse on the transform gizmo if your want to move it, you can also put your mouse on the thing you selected.

But max UI is kind of generic at defult settings, but it’s also very customizable when it comes to hotkeys and quad menus (quad menus are very powerful when you get to know them), so when you have configured max in “your way” it’s very fast to.

Wish there were a max to blender migration guide, I’m definitely going to write one when I’m getting better at blender. =)

Thanks again for your help

/gustav