Frustration; The Single Button Mouse

I remember when I was attending elementary school, very few students would use a computer mouse for more than things like "Kid Pix" or "All The Right Type", we used single button mice because they were more "User-Friendly" for kids. However this experience was in 2004 or 2005; 6 or 7 years ago.

At my highschool we use macs with single button mice, although i don't like macs OR single button mice, there was ever a moment where i couldn't comfortable use a hotkey command to simulate how i work on a PC, this was true for Photoshop so i didn't think i would have any trouble with software between the two operating systems and mouse setups.

This was true, until I started to use 3D software on a single button mouse. In 3dsmax, zbrush, sculptris and most of all Blender. The right mouse button is used to pan, rotate etc and the left usually to select and paint. Obviously on a Mac Mouse the right mouse button is to select and the left to select, the middle to select. Extruding, selecting faces and basically every aspect of a regular projects workflow is interrupted by this single button problem.

The programmers working on Blender have apparently figured out a solution to this problem though, the program has an option that lets you emulate a 3-button mouse on a single button mouse.








This adds command, shift and control modifiers to the clicks of a single button mouse and work to orbit, pan, zoom etc. However working on blender on a PC in one time block and then on a mac the next makes everything i learn on one OS collide with what i learn on another.

That is my frustration with Blender at the moment, the modifiers on each OS and hotkeys tend to differ and it will take a lot of getting used to.