i am new to blender and in the requierments its ays you need a mouse and most of the veiw hotkeys are on the number pad. i have a laptop that nether has a mouse (it has a mouse pad) or a number pad and my question is should i buy a mouse or number pad?
Assuming that your mouse pad still functions well for you as a mouse in terms of control, you should be fine. You can get to the views from the view menu so the numpad isn’t strictly needed. You’ll be slower, but it shouldn’t limit you in any other way.
Most of my blending is done on a laptop. It might be a good idea to get a mouse for your laptop but I dont use one(I need to.) If you look at the keys on the laptop youll see that the right side home row keys have numbers underneath them. Those are the same as a keypad on a keyboard, you just have to turn on num lock. Then you have to turn it off and on when you need to use the keys that coincide with the numbers. That really becomes a pain and slows down productivity a lot. So, hope that helps.
In the preferences there’s a setting labelled “No numpad” which will let you use the normal number keys instead of the numpad keys to switch views.
It’s a little harder to get used to (since 1,3,7 aren’t in the nice memory-jogging layout anymore) and you end up almost never using 2,4,6,8 but once you get the hang of it they’re just as easy as using the numpad itself.
I should know, I used blender for years on a laptop with that option, and a little 2-button touchdot…
I wrote up a tutorial for an OSX laptop, but some of it applies to laptops in general. Check it out.
http://www.lowpolycoop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24
Hopefully you have an fn key in the bottom left, then you don’t have to lock and unlock the numlock key.
Scott
thanks alot guys and now that i look at it i see all the number keys on the right side on my keybord and its a pretty nice setup. its all in the same order as a real number pad and i i have to do is press the function key (fn). again thanks