This is how we could reduce our workload by 50%

Archive Usability
1

Its a lot of unnecessary mouse movement and button presses to swap the naviation function between zoom, rotate and pan. Example of moving around a single point in space -

rotate - zoom - rotate - zoom (zoom to mouse position and depth are enabled in preferences)

rotate

  1. place mouse over point to rotate around
  2. press middle mouse
  3. move mouse away from that point to rotate

zoom

  1. let go of middle mouse
  2. move pointer back to original position
  3. press ctrl
  4. press middle mouse
  5. move mouse away from that point to zoom in

rotate again

  1. let go of middle mouse
  2. let go of ctrl
  3. move mouse back to original position
  4. press middle mouse
  5. move mouse away from this position to rotate

zoom again

  1. let go of middle mouse
  2. move mouse back to same position yet again
  3. press ctrl
  4. press middle mouse
  5. move mouse forwards

SOLUTION
That’s a lot of unnecessary button presses, releases and extra mouse movement. The solution is to be able to change the command without having to let go of the middle mouse. This would also mean you wouuldn’t have to move the mouse back to the original point, because Blender would continue using the point originally set.

The above rotate - zoom - rotate - zoom would become:

  1. place pointer over position
  2. press middle mouse
  3. move mouse around
  4. press ctrl
  5. move mouse to zoom around original point
  6. let go of ctrl
  7. move to rotate
  8. press crtrl
  9. move to zoom

That’s removing 50% of your viewport navigation button presses and arm movement!

2

Heya, just wanted to share my experience using the viewport navigation.

I remapped the buttons a bit, Holding Right mouse rotates viewport, middle mouse is pan and scroll is zoom, i still retain the ability to call the context menu window with a right click.

Hope this helps you a bit ?

3

Interesting, but you still have a lot more steps than my suggestion above, plus you still need to move the mouse back to the original point each time you change between zoom, rotate and pan.

4

My way of operating is:

  1. Select object or in edit mode select face/edge/vert
  2. View selected ( i dont use zoom to pointer cause its more work that it is helpful)
  3. then rotate or pan or zoom,

To me its irrelevant where the mouse pointer is as long as its in the viewport.

I suppose for your case it would be practical if the mouse did not move through the viewport as you drag it while pan/rotate/zoom is activated, that would at least spare you the moving the mouse pointer back and forth to the same position

5

You don’t have to use Ctrl to zoom, that’s only useful for precision zooming. You can simply just roll your wheel. Also you don’t have to pan that much if you’ve got Zoom to mouse position enabled (which I highly recommend).

Don’t think this needs any changing in Blender. It’s very possible your solution would fail badly in real world scenarios when it comes to multiple various workflows people have.

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