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Blender For Dummies Cheat Sheet

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2024-04-30 15:56:38
Blender All-in-One For Dummies
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When it comes to Blender, you can save time in many ways. Memorizing common mouse actions and numeric keypad hotkeys in Blender or common keyboard hotkeys in Blender’s 3D View help you work more efficiently in Blender. If memorization isn’t your thing, you can even print lists of these mouse actions and hotkeys and refer to them whenever you need to.

Common Mouse Actions in Blender

Blender makes it a point to use as many buttons on your mouse as possible. You have five fingers; you may as well get full use of them. This table gives you some of the most commonly used mouse behaviors.

Action Result
Left-click Select
Shift+left-click Add to selection
Ctrl+left-click (edit mode) Remove from selection
Left-click+drag Box selection
Alt+left-click (edit mode) Edge/Face loop select
Middle-click+drag Rotate view
Shift+middle-click+drag Pan view
Ctrl+middle-click+drag Zoom view
Right-click Context menu

Common Numeric Keypad Hotkeys in Blender

The numeric keypad gives you a high-speed means of navigating the 3D View in Blender. The following table explains some of the more useful and common hotkeys that involve the numeric keypad. (Note: If you’re using a laptop that doesn’t have a numeric keypad, you can enable the Emulate Numpad check box in the Input section of Preferences and use the numbers along the top of your keyboard instead of the numeric keypad.)

Hotkey Description
1 Front view
Ctrl+1 Back view
2 Rotate view up
Ctrl+2 Pan view up
3 Left side view
Ctrl+3 Right side view
4 Rotate view left
Ctrl+4 Pan view left
5 Toggle perspective/orthographic view
6 Rotate view right
Ctrl+6 Pan view right
7 Top view
Ctrl+7 Bottom view
8 Rotate view down
Ctrl+8 Pan view down
9 Redraw screen
0 Camera view
Ctrl+Alt+0 Set camera to viewport
/ Toggle local view
. (dot/period) Zoom on selection
+ Zoom into view

Common Keyboard Hotkeys in Blender’s 3D View

Blender is fastest when used with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. Nearly every key on a standard keyboard is assigned to some task within Blender, and sometimes more than one task. The following table shows some of the more commonly used hotkeys while working in Blender.

Hotkey Description
A Select all
Alt+A Deselect all
Shift+A Show Add menu
Shift+D Duplicate
Alt+D Linked duplicate
E (edit mode) Extrude
F (edit mode) Create face/edge
G Grab/move
Alt+G Clear location
H Hide selected
Alt+H Reveal all
I Insert keyframe
Ctrl+J Join selected objects
L (edit mode) Select linked vertices
Shift+L (edit mode) Deselect linked vertices
M Move selection to collection
Ctrl+M Mirror selection
N Toggle Sidebar visibility
Ctrl+N New Blender session
Shift+N (edit mode) Calculate normals outside
O (edit mode) Toggle proportional editing
P (edit mode) Separate to new object
Ctrl+P Make parent
Alt+P Clear parent
R Rotate
Alt+R Clear rotation
S Scale
Alt+S Clear scale
Ctrl+S Save file
U (edit mode) Unwrap mesh
W Change Selection Tool
X Delete selection
Ctrl+Z Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z Redo
Spacebar Play animation
Shift+Spacebar Show Tool menu
Ctrl+Spacebar Maximize editor area
Tab Toggle Edit mode
Ctrl+Tab Show mode pie menu
Tilde (~) Show view pie menu
F2 Rename selected object
F3 Show search menu
F9 Show floating Last Operator panel

About This Article

This article is from the book: 

About the book author:

Jason van Gumster is an expert Blender consultant to top studios and toolmakers. Jason and his family live the life of digital nomads while he builds custom tools and leads workshops on Blender all over the world. He’s author of all editions of Blender For Dummies, as well as GIMP Bible.