12.
Edge Center: Whereas Edge snapping snaps your selection to any close point on an edge, the Edge Center option snaps you to the center of an edge that you move your mouse cursor near.
Edge Perpendicular: The Edge Perpendicular option is a little tricky to wrap your head around. It works relative to the original location of your selection. When you translate your selection, Blender draws a small X at its original location. You can snap to any edge that makes a perpendicular angle with that X.
Snapping targets work in both Object mode as well as Edit mode. For more information on Edit mode, vertices, edges, and faces, see Chapter 4.
FIGURE 3-6: You can view changes in the 3D Viewport’s header.
Saving Time by Using Hotkeys
Many Blender users find that the object gizmos obstruct their view too much when working, so they never enable them or even use the transform tools from the Toolbar. But wait, with the gizmos gone, how do I transform my objects? I’m glad you asked. Enter one of the most powerful features of Blender: hotkeys.
Part of the beauty of Blender’s hotkeys are that they take a lot of pressure off of your mouse hand and shorten the distance of mouse-based operations. The accumulation of these little time-saving actions is what makes using hotkeys so powerful.
Transforming with hotkeys
You can access nearly every piece of major functionality in Blender with hotkeys. Transforms are no exception. One of the other terms for moving in Blender is grabbing. That naming has specific significance as it pertains to hotkeys. To see what I mean, follow these steps to Grab/Move your object:
1 Select the object you want to move.
2 Press G.Congratulations! You moved your object.
3 Confirm the move by left-clicking or pressing Enter.Cancel by right-clicking or pressing Esc.
Hotkeys and coordinate systems
By default, your transformations all happen in the View coordinate system when you use hotkeys. So no matter how you’re viewing the scene, you’re working in the XY plane of the 3D Viewport.
Suppose, however, that you want to grab your object and move it in the global Z-axis. You use a sequence of keypresses to do this action. Follow these steps to grab an object and move it to the global Z-axis:
1 With your object selected, press G.You’re now in Grab/Move mode.
2 Without canceling this operation, press Z.A blue line should appear that indicates the global Z-axis. Your object is locked to move only along that line. If you press Y, your object moves only along the global Y-axis, and pressing X constrains it to the global X-axis.
Pretty neat, huh? This method of using a sequence of hotkeys works with rotating and scaling as well (for example, R ⇒ Z rotates around the global Z-axis and S ⇒ X scales along the global X-axis).
What about any of the other orientations? That’s easy too. All you need to do is set the orientation you want from the Transform Orientations menu as described earlier in this chapter. Even though you’re not using gizmos to transform your selection, Blender still pays attention to the choice you’ve made in this menu. After you choose your preferred transform orientation, just use the standard G ⇒ X/Y/Z hotkey sequence to move your object along the corresponding axis in that transform orientation.
One of the more powerful features of the transform gizmos is the ability to work in a plane rather than just one axis. You can work in a plane with hotkeys as well. Use Shift plus the letter of the axis that’s perpendicular to the plane you want to move in. For example, to scale your object in the global XY plane, press S ⇒ Shift+Z. For the global YZ plane, press S
