Regards.
(Note: all commands in 3d view, model Edit mode.)
When modeling I use the edge slide a lot. The shortcut I was always used to was Ctrl-E>G.
I have recently found that G-G has a similar response with the difference of being able to move a single vertex, and I then found shift-V (while looking for a rip/fill shortcut) is actually called vertex slide and does pretty much the same thing.
Aren’t we using three various commands to do the same thing here?
Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Basics & Interface”
In short, the G+G hotkey combination is a wrapper for both slide operators. The other hotkeys remain partially out of legacy reasons and partially because there are occasions when you may want to (for example) explicitly do a vertex slide on multiple vertices, but G+G defaults to edge slide if those vertices are connected. The difference is subtle, but that’s the reasoning.
You are describing 2 operators.
Edge loop slide : it is an old operator that was only accessible by edge specials menu Ctrl E-> G.
Vertex Slide : it was introduced in 2.63 with shift V shortcut. It takes active vertex as reference.
In 2.66, more pratical GG shortcut was assigned to both operators. It uses the correct operator according to selection.
By default, in vertex select mode, GG will move a loop as edge loop slide will do it.
You may want to use shift V in vertex selection mode to be sure that you are moving vertices according to active vertex.