when i am selecting a verticy i keep getting a circle with an arrow at the top and one to the right. please can someone help icant drawvertices near now.
You need to turn the “Widget” off. Look below the 3D screen for the hand symbol and press it. Note however, that the “cursor” which is annoying you now will be your friend later - so remember how you got rid of it.
I’m just dying to take that 3rd sentance and make it a .sig :p:p I don’t do sigs other than “USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION!!!” but just know that would be it, Andy. 
[[ das 3D-Cursor Widget ist ein absolutes Muss für alle Trickzeichners! ]]
He He thanks. I often feel advice regarding Blender should come with a similar caveat. I wonder how many people have setup a new default window layout - before they even knew where half the tools lived?
Hey Andy D - what do you mean by that last statement…that’s intriguing!
Note however, that the “cursor” which is annoying you now will be your friend later - so remember how you got rid of it
Pedantic of me, I know, but don’t you mean “manipulator?” The cursor, as far as I know, can’t be disappeared…
On the subject of what I’m calling the manipulator(s), I’m curious, does anybody here use those? I got so into the habit of R and G and S that I don’t ever feel like I have any need for them, although they look cool (when they aren’t in your way). For people wondering what I’m talking about, try left clicking on the arrow or the circle or the box on one of the axes of the red blue and green doohicky (which you can make visible by clicking on one of the buttons next to the hand button). You can rotate, scale and translate your object along the axis you select that way.
It seems that those are the default way of working in Maya (actually, I learned their use in Blender from going through the Maya PLE tutorial…) But in Blender I prefer the old hotkeys.
What?! A graphics animator with penchant for pedantic minutiae!? Who’s ever heard of such a thing. Next thing you’ll try and tell me they are often sarcastic too!:eek:
And no, never. I rarely use any of the GUI interface. Hotkeys 99.5% of the time. Even for menus.
Sometimes gestures, but I’m usually trying to do something precise so I’m generally not in the habit of swinging the mouse in an arc to start the scale process, I’m holding shift and trying to get something 0.000 accurately positioned.
re: manipulator, I leave it off mostly. I turn it on sometimes, usually all three at once (combo, the ball look) but I have the keypresses Ctrl+Space,1 mapped to a mouse button, otherwise I’d find it much like the OP… “anoying”
Pedantic of me, I know, but don’t you mean “manipulator?” The cursor, as far as I know, can’t be disappeared…
Hence the reason I put it in quotes my dear bug 
I was merely referring to the title of the thread. (That said, there are times where I wish I could lock the real cursor so it didn’t re-position every time I accidentally clicked the screen - but that’s a separate issue)
As for the Transform Widget (which I believe is/was the popular, user-friendly name for the rather dreary “transform manipulator”), I use it quite a bit. I have come to almost rely on it with bone rotations. Turn on the Rot widget and set the Transform Orientation to “Normal” and the widget makes it quick and easy to perform sensible rotations. Since using this method, I find my bones no longer end up twisted into ridiculous positions (and frankly, my physiotherapist was getting quite tired of putting me back in place all the time!)
I’m usually mad on hotkeys but less-so with Blender. Using a one-button mouse means I seem to forever have one hand on the Apple, Option and Shift keys just to do anything at all - perhaps that’s the reason?!?
Hey Andy D - what do you mean by that last statement…that’s intriguing!
Just that a lot of newbies ask how to save a new theme and many probably don’t realise that when they press CTRL-U to save their new colour scheme, they are also saving the screen layout at that point, plus all objects, audio files, textures, materials, actions, IPOs and almost everything else that happens to exist in that file at that point in time.
Hence the reason I put it in quotes my dear bug
Yeah, I figured this out late. A little slow on the uptake sometimes.
I have come to almost rely on it with bone rotations.
I’d noticed that in Bassam’s rig Mancandy he’s got it set up like that. I’ll have to try it out.
Using a one-button mouse
Ouch. I got a new mac at work recently and I tried a little bit of blendering, but I’m afraid I will simply have to spring for one of those two button mac mouses if I want to use Blender on that machine. I can get used to a laptop and no number pad, but a one-button mouse…
Your standard, off-the-shelf, 3-button Microsoft mouse should work fine on any recent (5 years or younger - USB enabled) Mac. I’m just too lazy and too stingy to buy one.