How do I change the default Blender controls to allow for left click drag/box select? Like in the Maya preset controls

Question

When you use the Maya preset controls scheme left click and dragging allows you to use a drag/box select but in the default Blender control scheme left click and dragging edits the geometry of the mesh. How would I change the Blender controls to allow for left click to be drag/box select?

Answer 1

Open Blender, go to the splash screen, click on interaction, then on the drop-down menu, press Maya.

Answer 2

When trying to figure out the changes between presets, it's actually quite easy to reverse engineer once you know how. In the user preferences, navigate to the input tab, and (searching for Name, not Key-Binding) search for Border, and find the one under the 3D View heading. This is the one we'll need to modify. If you compare the differences between the two presets, you can figure out what's been changed.

By default, Border Select is mapped to the B key. Switch it from Keyboard to Tweak, and change it from Left to Select. If you want the exact behavior of the Maya preset (as in selecting with Border Select replaces the selection instead of extending it) simply disable the Extend option.

Here's an image of the original setting:

And here's the adjusted settings:

You may need (or want) to further emulate the Maya preset, in which case there are the Gesture Border settings located just below the main settings. These will affect how the tool behaves once you've activated it. You may have to play around with these to find a method that works with the default setup.

Here's how the Gesture Border settings are setup for the Maya preset:

Don't be afraid to play around with the inputs either. Once you edit the input for a tool Blender gives you an option to reset it back to whatever preset you're using.