Welcome to the community 
I agree on the numpad thingy, I’m currently also running Blender on my laptop so I’m going to pick up a separate numkey pad coming weekend.
Hi!
What tells Tgremlin is right. I have bought the manual very soon,and even if I had to wait for a time before delivery,I think that reading it from start to end has been a very good method.
I am french, and not very good in english, but I didn’t waste my time when reading this book.
Maybe because Blender is my first 3D software, and so My mind is not
polluted by other ways of thinking, but I had quickly Blender in hands.
And it is mainly thanks to the manual.
I think that the only feature of Blender 2.33a that is not in the manual is Ambient Occlusion… a simple look on this forum, let me know what it was.
Buy the Book or download a previous version,but anyway,READ IT!
Happy Blending!
Philippe.
k Ill´get bashed for this but to me the interface is very confusing. I still dont know exactly how to access the file menu. I just click at the menu buttons and get to it eventually. everything in blender is hidden behind hotkeys and the interface is extremly not intuitive to me. Just the castle tutorial helped my to just navigate . I have spent just 4 hours to get a way for blender not to screw up edges next to faces that I want to subdivide. I am a newb to this 3d stuf but why ccan maya and even wings have a nice way to create new geometry without screwing evry edge next to it
Jeff unless you are running and old version of blender just click on the file dropdown menu in the upper left hand cornner and you will see new, open, save and save as for file access.
Jeff wrote:
k Ill´get bashed for this but to me the interface is very confusing. I still dont know exactly how to access the file menu. I just click at the menu buttons and get to it eventually. everything in blender is hidden behind hotkeys and the interface is extremly not intuitive to me.
I’m not bashing you but I’ll use an analogy I used before to give you a perspective on your confusion:
The invention of the wheel led to wagons which could be quite easily adapted to animal power, then to steam and eventually to the internal combustion engine. Cars today are no more than glorified, technological wagons. But when (back in the days of steam) they wanted to move tons of dirt they had to redesign the concept and develop the bulldozer. It doesn’t have pneumatic (or wooden) wheels, doesn’t have a steering wheel and has a brake for each track. If you don’t want to rip off the wheels, rip off your arms or stall in turns, then that’s the only way you can move that amount of dirt.
Computers went from a screen to scrolling to windows, and graphics adopted the windows/menus model. Adobe used that model and the 3D suites took it from there. It’s all still the basic 2D windows and menus.
Blender ditched that wagon approach and redesigned the interface to use more than the windows and menus, it ditched the left-click-to-select, mouse-to-navigate, left-drag-to-opperate etc etc… and came in with a 3D cursor, selected/active, object-mode/edit-mode and button context interface that’s opperated on with the mouse and keyboard.
It’s a whole new approach to 3D. It takes a while to get used to but it’s worth it.
%<
If there are any things ‘hidden’ behind hotkeys (that are not in the menu system that is already browsable), can you please mention them, so they can be added to the menus?
I would like to have a copy of the manual… but what I want to do is to put my credit-card information into some online store somewhere and receive, not only a downloadable PDF-file, but the right to reconnect and purchase upgrades to that file (say) for a year. If anyone knows how to do that, please private-message me.
I recognize the value of information and don’t mind paying for it; not at all. But technical information that is on-line is vastly more available and therefore useful to me than any printed book.
The Blender user-interface (in its latest incarnation) is very useful, but the persistent problem with it is lack of documentation. ToolTips are helpful but they are not consistently available.
Hey Homr_Z welcome to Elysiun. 
I use blender on my labtop instead of my PC. The switching back and forth between numpad and regular keys aren’t too annoying. In no time you’ll get used to it, I have. Although I might switch to my PC in the next version of Blender when support for ATI bugs are fixed on the next official release.
Well what can I say. The Blender Interface is unique and although I haven’t tried any other modeling programs I’m not switching. Blender is by far the greatest app there is. 
Let’s not forget it’s free and there’s always newer versions coming out. That means it’s functionality will just keep getting better.
Once you have the interface down, it’s like second nature and you can model pretty fast. BLENDER ROCKS!!!
Jason Lin
I really don’t get people that talk about lack of documentation.
Go there and click on the Documentation link in the nav bar on the left: http://www.blender.org
Martin
Yes, you’re right sundialsvc4, the problem is a lack of documentation.
http://www.blender.org/modules/documentation/
Maybe, someday, the 2.3 manual will be put on line – oops, it already is for free download.
Maybe, somebody will update it with the latest changes – oops, they already are.
Updated documentation, matching the newely published Blender 2.3 Guide.
This is anyway a work-in-progress constantly updated by the Blender docboard, with the aim of maintaining an up-to-date Blender manual. If you’d like to contribute, please sign up to the bf-docboard mailing list.
I’ve heard a lot about how hard the Blender interface is supposed to be. What the complainers don’t realize is that ALL 3D APPS ARE HARD TO LEARN TO USE.
The Blender interface is efficient, and the most flexible I’ve ever seen in ANY application. (And believe me I’ve used a lot of graphics applications in my professional life).
Glad to finally see a positive thread on the subject.
nik
I too have enjoyed the Blender user interface. It is quite sleek efficent. I find it quite refreshing after using such programs like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word where anything that you want is buried under six sub-menues and a little animated paper clip bounces up and down in the lower right corner. On a slightly more relevant tone, does anyone know where one can download additional themes for Blender? Particularly a Mac OS X aqua theme? Blender could look neat with an aqua theme.
Yes, you’re right sundialsvc4, the problem is a lack of documentation.
http://www.blender.org/modules/documentation/
Maybe, someday, the 2.3 manual will be put on line – oops, it already is for free download.
Maybe, somebody will update it with the latest changes – oops, they already are.
Updated documentation, matching the newely published Blender 2.3 Guide.
This is anyway a work-in-progress constantly updated by the Blender docboard, with the aim of maintaining an up-to-date Blender manual. If you’d like to contribute, please sign up to the bf-docboard mailing list.
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Excellent! Obviously I missed it. (Not that I overlooked everything you referred to, of course, nor that I didn’t look.) Things change very fast, and let’s face it, information travels more slowly than change. Thanks for the heads-up.