Making Core Editors more accessible through shortcuts
A discussion on Blender Chat led to a simple proposal of making the NLA Editor more accessible by assigning it a shortcut.
Since Shift + (F1 to F12) are already assigned to other editors, I tried to add NLA to the group of Animation Editor Shortcuts, like using Shift+F6 (Graph Editor > Driver > NLA) or Shift + F12 (Dopesheet > Timeline > NLA). But it is currently not possible due to some technical quirk, better explained by Nathaniel-Rupsis on Blender Chat .
Here's 2 proposed solution for the same :
- Open up a new series of shortcuts - ex : Ctrl + Alt + (F1 to F12) - for NLA, and any new editors that might be added in future releases. I would also suggest to break up the current Node Editor list, as it already too long (user has to press Shift+F3 four times to cycle through), and the list might keep getting longer with the Everything Nodes roadmap.
- Add a new operator that will allow users to assign a shortcut to their preferred list of editors (by writing the name of editors separated by commas under Keymaps tab in User Prefs)
This will allow Blender to retain its current shortcuts, while making it easy for users to cycle through their preferred editors to fit their workflow, without further crowding up the keymap space. Ideally, this would also allow users to customize the Node Editor cycle list as per their liking (like assigning a separate shortcut for GeoNodes Editor, which is currently not possible)
6 Comments
"Add a new operator that will allow users to assign a shortcut to their preferred list of editors (by writing the name of editors separated by commas under Keymaps tab in User Prefs) "
For the reason you give to allow it to retain current shortcuts but add user choice this seems the best idea to me.
Agreed!! 💯
I open that menu with E and then press N
Wow, didn't know that was possible. Thanks! However, pressing E doesn't work for me. Have you assigned it as a shortcut?
Right click that button, assign shortcut.
It only recently got fixed so that you could assign a shortcut to that menu button
I think the top row number keys (1-0) are going to be free for 4.0. Those could be used also, especially if each number key will open a pie menu to choose from related editors (ex. Pressing shift + 3 opens a pie menu to choose between image editor and uv editor).
There are just so many editors and not enough buttons, but whatever gets decided the user should be able to get to the desired editor without doing crazy hand contortions.