Blender : 3D Cursor, Adding Objects In General and A little about Placing Them

What we will learn

In this post I am going to tell you about how to add objects in Blender. In previous post I have gave you a teaser of adding objects in blender. But here we will talk about the different methods to add objects and a little about placing them in 3D space. If we talk about placing the objects the 3D cursor have a very important role to play, and we will talk about that also. Placing the objects in depth will come in the following posts. So without wasting time lets get started.

3D Cursor

First we should know about the 3D cursor. Peoples switching from other 3D development softwares like 3Ds Max or Maya will found themselves dealing with something new. Yes its very unique feature the blender has. At start it will feel awkward how your left click places the 3D cursor rather than doing a predictable action like selecting an object. Well you can change this behavior from user preferences, but I will suggest not to do so. The following image is showing the 3D cursor in viewport :

3D cursor and Object's Position

Whenever you are adding a new object it will be added at the position where the 3D Cursor is. The 3D cursor mainly deals with placing the objects. You can snap any object to cursor, the cursor to any selected object or sub object like vertex. Different snapping options are available for 3D cursor and objects. You can access these options by pressing Shift+S inside the viewport.The following image is showing the options that will open after pressing Shift+S :

Changing the 3D Cursor Position

By default the 3D cursor is placed at the center (0,0,0) of the viewport. If by mistake you have left clicked somewhere else in the viewport, the cursor would have been misplaced by now. To place the cursor at the center (0,0,0) again press Shift+S and then choose 'Cursor to Center'.

Another way to change 3D cursor's position is from properties. Press N key to toggle Properties in viewport, and then go to 3D cursor segment to enter the position. The following image is showing the position of 3D cursor segment in Properties:

As we will keep talking about the 3D cursor wherever its needed, lets focus on adding objects in detail.

Adding Objects in blender 3D

Adding different kind of objects to the scene in blender is pretty easy. There are two methods by which you can add objects, and these methods are

• From menu bar
• By using shortcut

Adding objects from menu bar

To add objects from menu bar just click on Add menu and choose the object from there respective categories. For example if you want to add Cube you have to choose it from Mesh category. You can add different kind of objects like Mesh, Curve, Surface, Text, Armature(Bone in 3Ds Max), Empty (Helpers in 3Ds Max), Camera, Lamp ( Lights in 3Ds Max) etc.

Adding objects by using shortcut

The same list of objects can be opened for adding objects inside the viewport by using shortcut Sift +A while mouse pointer is inside the viewport. From this list you can add all these objects which you can add from Add menu.

Precautions for adding objects

There are two things that you should know before adding an object into blender.

The first thing is that new object is always added at the position of 3D cursor. 3D cursor's position can be changed by left clicking anywhere in the scene. Wherever you left click somewhere, the 3D cursor will be placed there. So if you have by mistake placed the 3D cursor somewhere else or outside the view the object will be placed there, if you want to add the object at the center, place the 3D cursor at the center, read the 3D cursor section of this post to do so.

The second thing is the properties of the objects you added like radius of sphere, size and radius of cylinder etc. You can tweak these properties for one time only when you added the object. These properties are tend to lost as soon as you transform the object or add another object. So you should tweak these properties immediately after adding the object before doing anything else. You can change these properties from bellow the toolbar.

The name of some of these properties are a little different in blender. Cube always have similar sided so rather giving it height, width and depth they gave it only one property Radius. Another thing is the sides of the objects like Cylinder and Cone became the vertices, means if you want 8 sides in the cylinders then you have to enter 8 vertices in the properties. The place from where you can change the properties is shown in the image bellow:

These are some general information about 3D cursor and adding objects in blender. We will talk about the methods of adding some specific objects like Text and Curves in the following posts.

And now hear is a tip for you, you can press F12 to take render of your scene, and after render press Esc to return to the 3D view.

Well I think its enough for now, see you in the next post and Happy Blending :)