Shift+drag(move, rotate or scale)=clone (incremental)
This idea comes from Max but can be further developed. In Max if I press shift while dragging an object (one axis) automatically it is cloned and an option window appears. I can put the number of cloned objects. The idea is to copy one object (or multiple) then continue to paste the previous one pressing ctrl+v (cmd+v on Mac) always in the same axis and at the same set distance. Also the copy (duplicate or cloning) command could have an option to make not equidistant cloning but choosing a factor to make progressions of copies at incremental distances scales and rotations.
6 Comments
Its kind of an industrial standard now. You move to copy select meshes or on edge extend them. Works with scale and rotate too. The cool thing is, that you do not need to leave the transform tool while doing that.
Recently I moved from 3ds to Blender and I really miss this feature. Instead of really fast modeling with shift+drag, I have to play like on piano to get what I want. I really hope, developers would consider this as optional behavior.
* @milos * the 3ds max way is also like playing on piano, only you're just using one finger instead of both of your hands.
in blender, you shift+D, then shift+R as many times as you want for additional copies. in max, you shift+drag, then hover your mouse over the little spinner and click the arrow, or type in a number, then decide if it's a reference or a copy, then click OK. how is that faster/easier? I guess if you only have one hand and depend entirely on the mouse it's easier?
I think if anyone wants to configure this in their keymap, they're more than welcome to. However, I would not want this for default behavior. I've used a few applications that have this feature and have regularly been frustrated by constantly creating unintended duplicates of a given selection.
* @Jason van Gumster * Though with Blender's templates, it might be usefull in some cases. E.g. it's pretty much what you do all the time in layout.
* @Jason van Gumster * Is it even possible to do with just keymaps? I don't think it is, because it would need to be part of the transform operator's modal keymap functionality. The best you could get with a keymap-only solution would just be duplicate on shift-up, which wouldn't really be what OP is describing. Something like this would need to be added to the transform modal operator and made available as a keymap people could assign- but I agree, it should not be assigned by default if that were the case.