I don’t want to offend irreducible blender people (I’m in too) but nowadays the 3D Cursor looks to me an old concept.
Put the cursor there, select the pivot point, set your snap options then do your action.
It looks a bit unpleasing and old concept because you need to elaborate a plan before doing the action!
Could it be replaced by something like: Do the action.
What inspired me this discussion is the discover of Moi3D software and CAD transform addon from Stephan Leger.*
The workflow is more something like:
We want to rotate something click rotate and do the rotate you want (pivot point, snapping, construction lines, all in during the rotate action.
We want to set the origin on a vertex, then do the set origin action and place the origin where you want
I realize that I don’t use much the 3D Cursor today, what do you think do you see some cases where it would be essential to have it ?
*Edit: Also the construction lines addon by norrid
As of 2.80, it can rotate to align to the geometry it is snapped to, and then add an object with that rotation applied.
In light of the work to make the cursor useful for more things, I don’t see how having every new object created at the origin point of a very large scene (which you then need to spend a minute moving) is the better way of doing things. I have seen a video where it is possible to create a “3D cursor” in Cinema 4D, but that is essentially replacing a perfectly working feature (which many find useful) with a workaround or a hack (which is completely counter-intuitive from a development standpoint).
We can imagine something like the new primitives tool added recently. Click the primitive tool then draw the object where you want (with helpers) no need to have the cursor for that.
If you talk about moving stuff from a to b then choose the grab tool instead then move from a to b
I don’t get why there are still people who argue it should go since you can hide the cursor now. At most folks should just ask for other options that they could use instead of it if they dislike it.
I would personally like to see the following options added to it:
the cursor could have a grid that projects out from its center that you could snap to (would work with its new rotation attribute); the cursor could have its own undo history; the cursor could have world location bookmarks; we could get the option of temporarily using the cursor as a pivot point by holding down a few modifier keys (maybe ctrl + shift).
There are a lot of things that could be added to blender to improve its cursor based workflow like this. Losing the ability to use any arbitrary point in space for operations wouldn’t make sense.
Making quick measurements (finding a coordinate). when you want to get a point in space if not having a 3D cursor you would have to create a temporary Empty object and use that instead. Then snap it to the selection or vertex you want. With 3D Cursor you do only (Cursor To Selection).
Creating an object. Same as before you can pick the 3D coordinate with an Empty object. Then create a new object (or geometry while in edit mesh mode). With 3D cursor you only move it around or snap it somewhere.
Doing 3D based transformations. I have not found enough uses for objects. However in mesh edit mode, enabling this results into some very interesting and weird results. Enabling this cursor based transform, then with only rotating and scaling (from cursor pivot), takes a totally fresh approach into having the shapes formed.
Mostly based on pure-use cases I can see that removing the 3D cursor will result into using extra intermediate objects and taking more steps into doing the same things. For the most part 3D cursor can be safely ignored (or even turned off from viewport), however when is really needed it makes sense.
I have felt for a long time that the 3d cursor seemed like the start of something good, but then after the first test implementation was done, it was considered finished forever and its revolutionary benefits to Blender’s workflow have been touted since, hence it defaulting to the LMB all the way until, Blender 2.79, putting off many potential (and perhaps lazy) Blender users. It’s pretty lacking though, and the name is weird, since it feels very 2d in the way it’s used. Since 2.80 it’s become a bit more useful because it’s much easier to snap to objects/components (ctrl+shift+rmb to drag it around), but overall I don’t find it that helpful.
It would be nice if it’s transform wasn’t buried in the view menu and it could be selected and transformed like any other object (perhaps by holding a key to enable selection of it). It would also be nice if the grid and units and operations could be relative to its transform, so that it could act as some kind of work plane for non-orthogonal modelling. Other than that, I’m sure there are lots of things that could be done to make it better, but as it is, it’s OK, but I’m glad it’s no longer wasting a whole mouse button.
It is very useful with transformation like rotate and bend.
Also with snap menu ‘cursor to selection’ you can get center of any selection like vertex, edge and face or objects, for setting origin or placing objects in modeling, which is not possible without cursor or needs complicated snapping system .
For example here i get the center between two apart edges easily. without cursor what kind of snapping system could do this?
Also handy in rigging and aligning and placing bones.
Modal and interactive snapping some times gets frustrating in populated scenes and clutter, because of the dependency to the viewport and mouse selection, but with cursor you can separately set snap point without frustration and mistake, then snap to that point easily.
At least old 3d cursor has more functionality than the new measure tool button
Old tools has several use cases and maybe hidden, we should not carelessly cut them off just because of they are old.
Unfortunately i have seen some brilliant old features cut of this way without any strong reason or greater good.
In 2.79 there was group instance option for meshes, in 2.8 the collection instancing is only available for empties and removed from mesh objects…these small changes can have massive negative impact on workflow.
EDIT:
I think there are some situations that interactive snaps with pick only start and end will miss.
Multiple targets with odd numbers is one of them, like below:
I think this ideas came mostly from people who used some other software with different workflow. There’s always some people in community who’s literally asking to make blender more like maya or max or cinema.
And it is not bad - that’s how some of the good things gettin to blender from time to time (I think blender should copy some from maya to the curve editor, for example).
But about 3d cursor IMO it’s not that case. I have almost two decades of maya experience and I even wrote scripts there to do things that 3dcursor does. And it was actually first thing i noticed when I started to use blender and made me think that blender IS actually cool program (not just free).
This isn’t gone forever. This functionality is a part of big asset management/library overrides project. So eventually it’ll come back but, maybe, in a bit different form.
This, this and this. The cursor is a fantastic tool once you understand what it can bring to the table (modeling-wise at least, other areas I don’t think it’s so useful).
I personally think that complaining about 3D cursor is an old concept that needs to go away. Anyone who complaints about it is not a mature Blender user. Most of the time people complaint about this because they do not get the point or they are used to working in other apps where 3d “cursor” is implictly there but not made available to the user.
There are so many ways you can use 3d cursor to get your work done.
In any case the user now has a way to disable it in 2.8x+ It makes no sense to complaint about it at this point.
3d cursor also needs optional gizmos. I don’t use them a lot but it’s kinda absurd what we still can’t precisely rotate it without going into sidebar. Ideally it should behave as unselectable pseudo object / workplane (with working snapping) / place for new objects, something like this:
Also coming from CAD apps like Rhino Alias etc the 3d cursor has it’s use but in many cases could be ignored when Blender would have better rotate scale move option tools
example
Blender
snap 3d cursor to geometry in edit mode (switching modes !!!)
switch pivot point to 3d cursor
scale object to 3d cursor or rotate object around 3d cursor
Rhino
select object
hit rotate
define start center point
rotate
DONE
Select object
hit scale
define start point
scale to target point
I love Blender but for such tasks it is still stupidly cumbersome
Now options like scale rotate around active object etc are things Rhino does not have !
But still with the way Rhino does it you wont need them all - period.
the only thing where Blender is better is rotate scale objects along their own pivot point !
