Pressing Esc for canceling extrude operation shouldn't keep the new extruded vertices

Other Development Topics Usability
#1

I can’t say how many times I had to disable an extrude operation by pressing Esc, but then had to select the whole mesh and use the Merge Vertices operator because even if I pressed Esc, the operation was still considered as I extruded something.

With every other modeling operation, as I would assume, pressing Esc disables that operation!

If I need the result of my extrusion to be in the same spot but keep that operation, I can just press the right mouse button, like every other modeling operation in Blender.
Am I missing something, or isn’t weird, counterproductive and time-consuming that the Extruding operation keeps the extrusion even when I clearly want to disable it, forcing me to do an additional step by selecting the whole mesh and merging the additional vertices?

6 Likes
#2

While I somewhat agree that it doesn’t feel completely logical, extruding and then canceling the translation with ESC is something I often do. And that is used in a lot of beginner tutorials as well.

Quite often you don’t want translate, you want scale. The way it currently works gives you the opportunity to switch to scale.

It would maybe more logical to have different hotkeys for extrude-move and extrude-scale. But I fear changing this would upset the muscle-memory of way too many people for it to ever happen.

Luckily removing double verts is not hard.

2 Likes
#3

This is because extrude operator is very old and is actually a combination of extrude and move command. So cancelling it only cancels move part.

While it’s something that you can get used to, it should be fixed for consistency sake. Bevel and inset operations don’t leave hidden zero area faces when you cancel them, extrude should behave the same.

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#4

it’s true that are also many instances where you need to scale a new extrusion from the same spot, but this can be done exactly the same by clicking the RMB.

Also, before as a beginner and still now as a regular user, I get confused by this behavior especially because sometimes I don’t remember a canceled extrusion, and I find out later when I’m doing another operation that there were more vertices than expected because I forgot to merge them. it occurs many times to me that when I’m modeling, every once in a while I select everything and use Merge Vertices just for the possibility of having additional vertices caused by unwanted operations, which many times appears to be true.

#5

I had completely forgotten about RMB to cancel the move. :blush:

I guess it’s mainly my own muscle memory that’ll need change :smiley:

Edit: Ctrl-D behaves the same way, by the way. Both in edit and object mode. ESC cancels the movement, but not the duplication.

I’m still not really sure about this. I agree it might have been better if it had been consistent from the start. But as it is I’m quite used to the current behaviour.