I am in a process of changing Blender’s hotkey scheme to something based on a common sense, and so far it went smoothly but this is giving me a hard time. I am quite sure this has already been resolved/discussed before, but I tried googling and searching this forum, but have not found the answer I need.
I want to assign 1 key to Vertex edit mode, 2 key to edge, and 3 key to face so that when I hit the key even in object mode, it will go directly to edit mode with appropriate element mode activated. Right now, I’ve managed to map the keys to the modes, but I still have to manually activate edit mode before I can start modeling, which is very annoying.
You could simply add three more hotkey nodes in the Input manager in the user preferences. And assign your keys to switch the select modes in edit mode also to switch to edit mode at all. Nobody says that per tool just one hotkey is allowed. Worked fine here, i tested it before a few moments. Have a look in the 3D View / Object Non-Modal section. There are the hotkey nodes to switch between the modes. Duplicate the one to switch into edit mode, and assign your needed keys.
But this might give you trouble in case you want to change the assignment of the hotkeys from within the menu. And you will loose three vital single key hotkeys that way just to jump into edit mode. Which is imho a waste of resources. Remember, you might want to use key 1 , 2 and 3 in paint mode or vertex mode too …
The tab key is right next to the 1, 2, and 3 keys. I honestly can not understand how you would find it “very annoying” to tap it.
Beyond that, if you’re wanting to execute a string of commands with a single key press, you need a script.
