Move widget + shift key = moving in undesired direction?

[Harris Clook]

Currently working on animation atm, but I noticed this even when I was doing modeling courses. 

Sometimes when I want to move something by a small amount, I’ll do the grab axis + shift hotkey. Sometimes this works, othertimes it moves in a different direction?

I’ve noted that this happens if I hold shift before grabbing the axis – usually while working too quickly.

EG, I’ll hold shift, grab the Z axis, and instead of the object moving up, it’ll go from left to right. Whereas it otherwise performs as intended if I grab the axis and then hold shift.

This is a muscle memory that even a year on I’m still getting used to. But what action is blender performing by holding shift first? Ie, what is this a hotkey for. and can I change it in the preferences as I can’t see it being helpful (unless it can be)?

[Dwayne Savage]

I’m guessing you are probably holding shift+z. This locks to a plane which means that you can move/scale/rotate on 2 axis. The one that is excluded is the one you hit while holding the shift key. For example if you want to move a chair and desk around on the ground(axis X and Y) but don’t want it to lift up or drop down(z axis) then you would press G then Shift+z. This is very useful so I wouldn’t disable it, but if you really want to then click key bind button and type “SHIFT Z” or “SHIFT X” or “SHIFT Y”  without the quotes in the search field to get a list of the operations that use that key combo. Note: If you are set to Global pressing shift+axis a second time will use local. If you have a different transform orientation(comma) it will use that on the first time and Global on the second time. For example if you are say moving numbers along a face of die to Boolean the number in to the face. Then you can change the transform orientation to view, select the face, and press shift+numpad 7 to look straight at the selected face. Then just use shift+Z after you press G. 

Additionally you can move and scale along a plane using the move and scale gizmos. On the Gizmo you will see little colored square. The color corresponds with the excluded axis. For Z it is the blue one. For X it’s the red one. For Y it’s the yellow one. 

[Harris Clook]

Ahhh.

I was using the mouse to move the z axis on the move widget, whilst already holding shift.

But yes you’re right that makes so much sense now. It’s just like hitting G to move, and then shift + axis hotkey to lock it to it’s alternative axes

Cheers Dwayne

[Dwayne Savage]

Oh wow! I didn’t know that. I’ve always used the little box on the gizmo. I didn’t know you could just use shift and click the axis to exclude/work on a plane. Learned something new. 

[Martin Bergwerf]

Oh, I also didn’t know that SHIFT+Gizmo behaves like (G,R,S), SHIFT+Axis. That’s good and fun  to know!

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