I’m new to Blender 2.8, and I’m irritated by the behavior of BoxSelect: When using it in Edit-Mode from the ToolBar it starts a new selection and only extends when holding [Shift]. When starting it with [B], it always extends the current selection, however you can deselect by holding [Shift]. This is quite annoying because I have to deselect every time before pressing [B].
This is not surprising. Reply is relative to a 2.79.
In 2.8, Box Select tool has several modes that did not exist in 2.79.
Set (New Selection), Extend, Substract, Difference, Intersect.
By default, Active tool is using Set mode. (that is behavior common in many applications.)
But B shortcut is using Extend (that was default in 2.79).
That is not obvious into shortcut panel because you can see a Mode field displaying Set by default.
But that is a greyed out value which is ignored. Internally, default is Extend for this tool.
So, that is probably UI stuff that needs to be polished.
But you should be able to have B shortcut working as you want simply by clicking on Mode value and setting it to Set.
At that moment, mode should not be greyed out, anymore and a little cross should be visible to restore default value (Extend).
@RonanDucluzeau thanks for the explanation. Sadly the work around you describe only works when I activate and uncheck the “wait for input” option. This behavior, however, really needs some getting used to.
I still believe, that the default behavior of [B] BoxSelect should be aligned with the “tool” box-select mode. For me, they are the same thing and it shouldn’t matter if I activate it by clicking the icon vs. pressing the keyboard shortcut.
Didn’t notice that the B shortcut freezes the view?
thats because its not the same, select box its an other tool different tool, what you are looking for its the select in the active tools bar
The shortcut for that quick menu its space bar or shift+spacebar depending in what did you choose the first time you opened 2.8x or it can be configured here
What I do is swap the (De)select all and select all so that de-select is “A”, because I almost never select everything.
Also, you can press MMB with box select to de-select instead of selecting, so if deselect-all isn’t what you’re doing then what is your deal?
It’s a different tool, part of the modal workflow. There are reasons it works this way. It was designed to enable a fast selection workflow by using A to deselect/select all whilst using the left mouse button to add to the selection and the middle mouse button to remove from the selection.
No, that is the same tool.
You can change Box Select mode to New Selection when it is called by B shortcut.
Using A is unnecessary if you are using New selection mode.
Pressing A and Alt A is not faster or more efficient. That is just the old way to do it.
I agree that is more efficient if you have 2 different ways to call same tool to attribute to them 2 different behavior.
But I think that does not make fact that is same tool discoverable or shortcuts easier to remember.
Modal tools and active tools are different tools, meant for different workflows. They may accomplish similar tasks, but they are designed and meant to accomplish them in different ways, for differing workflows.
The active tool works on the premise of holding down shift or ctrl to activate different modes. This is necessary because the tool is always active, hence active tool.
The modal tool works on the premise of using left or middle mouse button to differentiate between add or subtract, this is enabled because the tool is only in use when it is activated by the b key, and deactivates after usage. As such you can quickly switch to using and integrating any other tools into the workflow, and hence the A key is used to deselect all should you need to do so and the ‘new’ selection mode becomes irrelevant.
Active tools use holding modifier keys down, and holding buttons down in general to accomplish varying tasks. Modal tools use toggles and modes to accomplish those tasks.
Moreover, I don’t know about you, but I sure tend to extend or reduce selections more frequently than start new ones from scratch.
Changing the modal tool’s box selection mode should probably be easier than what I can find, an option in the hotkeys that currently seems to not work, at-least for me, but it’s default is set the way it is because modal tools and active tools are meant to be used differently.
I extend selection when I continue to work on same area of mesh.
Blender keeps selected elements that we are working on.
So, extension/reduction of selection is an easy and frequent operation.
But seriously, using box select or lasso, choosing new selection mode is often as pertinent to directly reduce/extend current selection to a pertinent area. And this mode can also handle the ability to jump to a completely different area of mesh.
That is not a default on many other software for bad reasons.
This new mode was added responding to requests of users with experience from other software.
That is not true that there is a thinking about use of A that justifies to keep extension mode as default.
It is as is just because it was as is in 2.79 before ability to directly create a new selection without use of A to deselect.
But you are right that is a pity that “Wait for Input” option has to be disabled to allow to use custom modes.
It probably has to be seen as a bug.
