3D Cursor

In this section, we will learn about the 3D Cursor and how it can be used. We will also enter  Edit Mode and set our Pivot Point.

Open a new Blender file and add a new Cube object. As mentioned before, the orange dot is the Pivot Point, which is the point (anchor) of the object that Blender uses to transform (in most cases).

Enter  Edit Mode and select a single vertex.

Use Shift + S to open the Snap Pie-menu (a pie-menu is a floating UI element where you can choose a "slice" to quickly select certain operations) and select the bottom one, "Cursor to Selected". This will snap the cursor to the selected vertex. You can do this with any selection. If you select an edge, it will use the center of that edge, for instance. Experiment and continue when you are ready, and read for more information.

Make the cursor snap to your selection and go to  Object Mode and go to the header Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor. Once you confirm, you can see that the pivot point has been moved to the 3D Cursor. This is one of the ways that you can change the pivot point. Try to rotate or scale, and you will quickly see how this works.

Another way is to add an object, this can be a Cube or UV Sphere. Snap the cursor to a point on the cube and go out of  Edit Mode and into  Object Mode, and select the other object. Go to Object > Snap > Selection to Cursor. As you can see, the object has been placed at the location of the cursor.

There are multiple snapping options in the menu that we have skipped, we encourage you to play around with the snapping options.

Mini assignment

Create a single stack of Suzannes (Monkey), going from big at the bottom to small at the top. Use the Transform tools or shortcut G, R, and S to achieve this and orbit around to make sure it could potentially stay upright. First, use Shift + C (or use the pie-menu Shift + S > Cursor to World Origin to snap the 3D Cursor to the center of the world (which is 0.0.0) and add a plane. Now you can start stacking Suzanne!

You can create something like this.

That was the end of the lesson. We have learned:

• How to move the 3D Cursor.
• Setting the origin point of an object using the 3D Cursor.
• Using the Snap menu to place an object at the location of the 3D Cursor.