3D Cursor Plus
Axes / Gizmo
If you ever wanted to see the cursor's axes more clearly or to have a gizmo for easier manipulation, here they are. You'll have two separate presets; use any or both, and toggle between them with a shortcut, a button on a panel, or a pie menu. Adjust them to fit your needs: change colors and sizes, choose the desired behavior for each preset, define visibility in separate areas, link with the 3D cursor, or use it instead of the cursor.
Undo
If enabled, makes Undo and Redo work for your 3D cursor too. For the sake of simplicity, this function only considers changes in these three parameters: Cursor's Location, Euler Rotation and Rotation Mode. Changes in its Quaternion and Axis Rotations are ignored due to their redundancy, cursor-wise.
Change detection has a tiny (~0.3 sec) delay to filter out unnecessary transformations. So, if you attempt a 'rapid' cursor placement (more than 3 per second), probably only the last one will be detected. This limitation does not apply to Undo and Redo operations themselves.
Cursor Related Operators
PLUS Operators are intended to streamline your workflow by providing easy access to default Blender operators that have been slightly tweaked to work with reference to the 3D Cursor. They work both in 'Object' and 'Edit' modes, and some of the operators have modifiers that can alter their default behavior if 'SHIFT' or 'ALT' is held prior to calling them.
Snap To (with Op Modifiers)
Move your 3D cursor with the 'Snap' option enabled and a separate 'Snap List', independent from your global snap options.
- Tweak Snapping: You can choose elements to snap to via panel, pie menu, or shortcuts, and enable or disable 'Aligning Rotation to Target'.
- SHIFT: temporarily invert the current rotation mode.
- ALT: snap with the cursor rotation reset on start.
Move
Move the selection along the 3D cursors axes. The default is the Z axis.
Rotate
Pivot the selection around the 3D cursor.
Scale
Scale the selection using the 3D cursor as a transform point.
Copy Rotation
Copy the rotation of the 3D cursor to the selected object(s).
Reset 3D Cursor (with Op Modifiers)
Clear the 3D cursor rotation, location, or both(by deafult).
- SHIFT: Reset only rotation.
- ALT: Reset only location.
- SHIFT+ALT: Call the built-in 'Center Cursor and Frame All' function (default shortcut: Shift+C).
Override (with Op Modifiers)
Override the current Transform Orientation and/or Pivot Point to 'Cursor'. It is possible to assign to the pie menu a callable 'Override' panel with 3 separate buttons, or to use the 'Override' as a single button with two available modifiers:
SHIFT: Override Transform Orientation.
ALT: Override Pivot Point.
By default, it will do both.
What's New
1.0.3 January 29th, 2025
Changed the approach for shortcuts: added the placeholders for 'PLUS Ops', 'Align Rotation' and for separate snap elements. Now they might be set once and will work in all editors. The Keymap Tab in Addon Preferences was slightly reworked according to the new changes.
Added modifiers for three operators, altering their behavior if 'SHIFT' and/or 'ALT' was held when the operator was called (inspired by MACHIN3tools):
- Snap Cursor: ability to temporarily invert selected rotation mode or to clear the cursor rotation on start.
- Reset 3D Cursor (formerly 'Clear Rotation'): ability to reset only rotation, only location, both, or call a built-in 'Center Cursor and Frame All' (default hotkey: Shift+C).
- Override: added an alternative and simplified option to set it up in the pie menu as a button with three options, instead of a callable panel. Grants ability to override both transform orientation and pivot point, or choose one of them in one move.
Specific details are listed in the description of these operators.
Added 'INFO' messages (in the status bar) for 'Align Rotation', 'Toggle snap element', 'Clear Cursor' and 'Snap Cursor' operators to complement the changes mentioned above.
Expanded the Gizmo availability to other editors besides 'Object' and "Edit'.
Fixed 'Cursor Undo'. In some cases it was partially undoing the last object transformation, if the object origin(location or orientation) were just changed while in 'Edit' mode.
Minor text and tag adjustments.
This is an excellent addon, the ability to quickly snap the 3D cursor to vertices in object view alone is worth the install. And on top of that, the functionality to use the 3D cursor as the transformation origin, without actually changing the pivot point, It's just brilliant.
Thank you for making and maintaining it!
Suggestions for future versions.
- Add "reset 3D cursor" to the pie. This way, it will be possible keymap the addon to shift+C
- Add the option to snap the cursor to the middle of faces.
- Add the option to snap the cursor to the middle of selected objects/vertices/edges etc
- Add the option to change snaping targets through short cuts. It would be more effective than having to open the "tweak snapping" between operations. Especially when you want to use snapping targets to position the 3D cursor in a very specific place
- Add the option to set the rotation of the 3D cursor. Some times you want the 3D cursor to inherit the direction of the normal, of the vertex(es) it is snapped to. But at other times, you want it to retain the rotation it already has. And at other times you want to reset it to world axis. It would be very convenient to change the behavior during transformation with shortcuts. Having the option to reset the three axis separately would make the functionality even more useful.
- Add the option to snap to the middle of already assigned snap points, for example with "enter" instead of having to left click the final snap point. This would be helpful, when you try to position the 3D cursor in a complex model.
Great little addon, thanks! But I found some strange behavior (mesh moving) when using "3D Viewport Pie Menus" extension with your addon enabled. I created an issue on Github about that.