at the top, it's at the top left. Left-click this icon and the header reappears.
✔ Change the location of the header. You can also change the location of the header to either the top or bottom of the editor it belongs to. To do so, right-click the header and choose Flip to Top (or Bottom, depending on where your header currently is).
When working in Blender, you also occasionally need to maximize an area. Maximizing an area is particularly useful when you're working on a model or scene and you just want to get all the other areas out of your way so you can use as much screen space as possible to focus your attention on the task at hand.
To maximize any area, hover your mouse cursor over it and press Shift+Spacebar. You can toggle back to the tiled screen layout by either pressing Shift+Spacebar again or clicking the Back to Previous button at the top of the window. These options are available in the header menus of nearly all editor types by choosing View ⇒ Toggle Full Screen. You can also right-click the header and choose Maximize Area from the menu that appears. If the area is already maximized, then the menu item will say Tile Area.
✔ Each menu item has a much larger click area.
With a typical list-type menu, once you find the menu item you want, there's a relatively small area that you need to precisely click. With a pie menu, you only need to have your mouse cursor in the general area around your menu selection (its slice of the pie). Because you don't need to be as precise with your mouse, you can navigate menus faster with less stress on your hand.
✔ Menu options are easier to remember.
As humans, we tend to naturally think about things spatially. It's much easier to remember that a thing is up or left or right than to remember that it's the sixth item in a list of things. Because the menu items are arranged in two-dimensional space, pie menus take advantage of our natural way of recalling information. Also helpful for memory is the fact that any given pie menu can only have as many as eight options.
✔ Selecting menu items is a gestural behavior.
A gestural interface relies on using mouse movement to issue a command. Pie menus are not purely gestural, but by arranging the menu items spatially, you get many of the same advantages provided by gestures. Most valuable among these advantages is the reliance on muscle memory. After working with a pie menu for an extended period of time, selecting menu items becomes nearly as fast as using hotkeys, and for essentially the same reasons. You're no longer thinking about the direction you're moving your mouse cursor (or which key you're pressing). You've trained your hands to move in a specific way when you want to perform that task. Once you get to that point (it doesn't take very long), you'll find that you're working very quickly.
✔ Pie menus are basically limited to a maximum of eight menu items. (It's possible to have more items, but if a pie menu has more than eight items, it becomes cluttered and the speed and memory advantages of pie menus are lessened.) Blender has a number of menus that are very long; therefore, they don't translate nicely to the pie menu model. This means that some menus will be pies and others will not. Hopefully, as development continues on Blender, these menus will migrate to being more pie-like.
✔ Pie menus, as of this writing, aren't enabled by default. As Blender development progresses, the plan is that pie menus will eventually be enabled as a default option. For the time being, however, you need to manually enable them. As that's the direction that Blender is currently heading (and Blender development is fast; there's a new release nearly every two months), I recommend that you go ahead and enable pie menus so you can get comfortable with them early.
The process of enabling pie menus is easy:
1. Open User Preferences (File ⇒ User Preferences or Ctrl+Alt+U) and go to the Add-ons section.
2. On the category list on the left side of the window, choose the User Interface category (you may need to scroll down to see it).
The Pie Menus Official add-on should appear on the list to the right (as of this writing, this add-on is the only one in the User Interface category, so you may need to scroll back up to see it).
3. Enable the Pie Menus Official add-on by left-clicking its checkbox on the far right.
4. Pie menus are now enabled. Left-click the Save User Settings button at the bottom left of the User Preferences window.
That's it! Pie menus will be automatically enabled each time you start Blender. (Read more about Blender add-ons in Chapter 2.)
To try out pie menus, first close the User Preferences window. With your mouse cursor in the 3D View, press Q to show the View pie menu. You should see a menu like the one in Figure 1-8.
Figure 1-8: Your first pie [menu]!
With the menu still visible, move your mouse cursor around the screen. Notice that the highlighted area of the circular slice indicator at the center of the menu points to your mouse cursor. Also notice that as you move your mouse cursor, individual menu items highlight when you enter their slice of the menu. This highlighting is how you know which menu item is currently ready to be picked. Press Esc to close the menu without selecting anything.
There are two ways to choose menu items in a pie menu:
✔ Press, release, click: This can be considered the standard method:
1. Press and release the hotkey that activates the menu.
In this example, press and release Q.
2. Move your mouse cursor to your desired menu item's slice.
3. Choose that menu item by clicking anywhere within its slice.
The current active slice is indicated by the circular slice indicator at the center of the menu, as well as the highlighting of each menu item as your mouse cursor enters its slice.
✔ Press, hold, release: I think of this method as the fast way.
1. Press and hold the hotkey that activates the menu.
In this example, press and hold Q.
2. Move your mouse cursor to your desired menu item's slice.
