Doubts on Keyboard shortcuts

Hi
I am new to Blender, migrated from 3ds max recently. I would like to change my keyboard shortcuts in blender 2.8 like 3ds max. I want to change X, Y, Z keyboard short cuts to F5, F6, and F7?

You can change it under “Preferences” > “Keymap” from Blender to Industry Standard, also in that tab you can change all the individual shortcuts. But as far as I understand the Industry Standard keymap has limited functionality compared to the default Blender one, so if you’re planning to use Blender long-term it might be beneficial to learn the default layout.

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You can ofcourse modify the keymap to create a custom one, which is what I did to get the best of 3ds Max’ hotkeys and those from Blender. Just to warn you up front, be careful to check if there are any duplicate entries in the keymap in case the hotkeys do not invoke the required command. Arrimus 3d has a few introduction videos to Blender in which you can see the process of setting things up in case you don’t know how yet.

For F5, F6, F7 transform constraints, add the following commands to the Transform Modal section:


You can do the same for Y, Z and origin planes, I recommend you to add these rather than overwriting the existing entries, since the X, Y and Z button are used with context sensitivity and are not in the way for using them the way you would in Max.

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Thanks for your replay, I have been working in 3ds max for almost 20 years. now i decided to switch over to Blender.

Thank you very much. I was struggling to get this. It’s working now. Thank you

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You’re welcome, it took me a while to figure it out myself as well :wink:

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I’d try to change as few Keyboard shortcuts as possible, in my experience, the more you mess with it, the more problems you may have. And it makes Youtube tutorials hard to follow.

The way hotkeys are implemented in Blender (by default) is actually really powerful, and you may not fully realize this until you spent a heap of time using Blender and editing the shortcuts to you own custom ones, only to later come to the conclusion that you need to go back (mostly) to the defaults to get the full benefit of the default system!

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Well, I beg to differ. The default hotkeys are less than ideal. Sure it is easier to learn the software with, but everyone has their own set of tools they use more often than others so making sure these are mapped conveniently is really beneficial for individual workflows. I’d suggest starting with the defaults (and see which one you like most) and once you get accustomed to the software and notice some oddly placed or missing hotkeys add/customise them! Pro tip for customisation is to disable autosave and export your hotkeys when you’ve made some changes. This way you can always revert back to the keymap settings you’ve used previously (in case you’ve made a mistake somewhere).

Indeed, what i meant was: as a new user, it’s best not to dive in and immediately start customizing the shortcuts, because you’ll mess things up and miss out on some of the power, and you’ll have trouble following tutorials. Obviously a power user might start to customize to their heart’s content.

The hotkey system could use some work. The fact that when you try to assign a hotkey, Blender neither warns you it’s already in use nor lets you override the old assignment is truly idiotic!

Something else to watch out for: i don’t know if was a one off bug or whatever, but a couple of times i had this happen: when loading in my custom keymap file, Blender would DELETE the file after loading it in! So imagine you spent hours making your own custom mapping, you load it in, you mess around some more, perhaps mess things up, or perhaps you restore defaults for some reason, then try to load it in again to get to your last good version and POOF, it’s gone! grrrrrrrr

@Daz_Harris
Best to also keep a backup in the cloud as well, makes switching computers easier too.

The jumping through the keymap editor when changing a button is such a chore for selection changes… All the input names’ are the same, so confusing.

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