I wanted to learn how to delete multiple drivers on my own using these instructions from the manual.
Quote from the manual:
Removing Drivers
Reference
Menu
Context menu ‣ Delete Driver(s)
Menu
Context menu ‣ Delete Single Driver
Hotkey
Ctrl-Alt-D
Removes driver(s) associated with the property, either for the single selected property or sub-channel, or all components of a vector.
end quote
This gave absolutely zero hints for what to do. I had to search every single menu and found no such Delete Driver(s) or Delete Single Driver.
I wasted so much time using the manual. It’s almost like it was written for another software it was so off.
On my own I figured out what to do. Go to Blender Driver Editor panel mouse drag a box over all the drivers on the left, go to the Channel menu > Delete Channels or use key X
A lot of these things are context sensitive in Blender.
For example, if you have drivers for all the rotation values you can right click for the context menu on the rotation sliders and select delete driver to delete the driver on that channel, or delete drivers to delete them on all the rotation channels (in this specific example).
Ctrl-Alt-D would similarly only work in the given context. Hover over the driver on the rotation values (if we go with the example from above) and use the key combination. If you just use it in the viewport nothing will happen.
But it doesn’t say anything that the actual context is relative to translation, rotation, or scale, values.
It doesn’t indicate right clicking to get to the delete driver menu.
It doesn’t apply to a myriad of other drivers.
What I am getting at is the manual being so specific about 1 scenario while being so vague about what it is referring to is why no one can enjoy learning on their own using the Blender manual. This problem exist everywhere with the Blender manual. Maybe I’m not smart enough to get it maybe it’s so obvious to everyone else but me, or do I have a point?
Absolutely, I do get your point and I agree, it can be confusing.
The context menu being context sensitive on the other hand is something that would need to be pointed out for almost everything, not just deleting drivers. Since it’s more like a general concept it’s a bit of a gray zone. They could point out how and where to get the context menu, but I’m not sure it’s practical to do so in every subsection of the manual.
I got used to the logic to a certain degree so I’m probably not the best to judge. Making things more friendly to others transitioning from different packages is always a good thing - it might be worth doing a proposal of some kind (With the big picture in mind of course).
When it comes to specific things like this (deleting a million drivers that are all over the place, split normal data for thousands of objects, etc.) I found it’s easier to write a couple lines in python and make a button for it (I’m not very good at python, but there seemed to be no way around).
I know this is not very helpful, but this seems to be where we are when it comes to making things more streamlined for our specific needs.
If someone should do a survey about how users solve their problems, I think that “looking up in the Blender manual” will end up at the very bottom. The quality of the manual just does not reflect the quality of the software. There is a reason why there are so many (YouTube) tutorials. It’s the only way to learn and answer your questions. But, I, in any case, am tired of searching and watching the next (basic) tutorial for solving my problems. The documentation should do that. Contributing to the documentation however is also not that easy (I’ve contributed a few pieces). It should help if contributing should be easier (some kind of wiki-thing).
Software is only as good as how intuitive it is, for the parts that aren’t, finding the information on how to do something with that software should be the part that is intuitive instead. Anyone who says that using resources on a for all to learn manual is a waste of time doesn’t understand how important it is to the success of Blender itself.