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I am getting into some more serious hard surface modelling right now and came to think, that it would be a REALLY helpful to speed up things if there would be a specific feature, that I can’t seem to find anywhere in the documentation or the interface of blender (I am using versions 2.8 and 2.9 at the moment): Is there a script or addon (or even a built-in function which I am just not finding) to align the view to the ORIENTATION of the 3D cursor? Much like you would do with the submenu View→ Align View → Align View to Active… but WITHOUT switching into edit mode. Given the fact that you can auto rotate the cursor when placing it to the surface it is placed on, this seems like an incredibly fast way to orient your view for off-axis manipulations for example with a tool like BoxCutter. I know that I could go into face mode, select the face, align the view and switch out again, but that would force me to do this sequence of steps over and over again if I want so switch to different orthogonal views of the selected face (like you would do with Shift + Num7 or Shift + Num 1 etc.) So far I have only found the “Center view to Cursor” functionality and that is not helpful at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Cheers!

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There's an align tools addon in vanilla blender that has 3d cursor option. But it appears to be buggy.

I wrote an addon for that just now. So it probably has bugs. It has only one functionality for now: align view to 3d cursor.

link to addon

Important Note: It can be used in object and edit mode but it removes (unselects) previous selections. It's not hard to fix that. I probably fix it when I have time. Or feel free to fix it yourself.

let me know if you found any bug or any way to improve this addon.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Oh wow, that is exactly what I needed! Thank you so much, great work! I cannot understand, that this his not already part of the blender standard functions since the 3D curser orientation has been introduced. Anyway: thanks again! :D $\endgroup$
    – Fragego
    Oct 10, 2020 at 7:36
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In the blender preferences, under Keymap ((3D view > 3D view (global) in your case), you can find all the shortcuts.

For "Frame selected" its ctrl+, on numpad which I found inconvenient and so I changed it for something more suitable for me.

For the view you are looking for it is probably the key ; between Escape and Tab at the top left corner on keyboard. It opens a pie menu with views and then by pressing numbers next to this key you select the view you want.

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  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, but I don't see any shortcut there that achieves the desired function. $\endgroup$
    – Fragego
    Oct 10, 2020 at 7:33
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I completely agree. It would be more consistent for the 3D Cursor to behave more fully as an object, when aligning a view. (It would also be nice if, when using ShiftS > Cursor to Selected, that command respected the Cursor Tool > Orientation > Geometry setting.)

In the mean time, you can use an Empty in its place? Create, say, an Axis-Arrows Empty, and set Snap to 'Face', and 'Align Rotation to Target'. Then you can move the Empty around the scene as you wish, maintaining its alignment to the geometry beneath it, and at any time hit ShiftNumpad 7 to align the view to the Empty's Z.

In a way, it's more convenient.. you don't have to switch in and out of the 3D Cursor manipulation tool, but.. there are more steps, still, if you want your Transform Orientation to align to the Empty :(

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the explanation, but that was what I had figured out already. As you remarked very correctly that takes a LOT of extra steps and therefore makes the process quite cumbersome, which was the reason for me to write that post in the first place ;). Nevertheless, thanks again for taking the time! $\endgroup$
    – Fragego
    Oct 10, 2020 at 7:28
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It's one year and a half late, but I just released an add-on that provides 2 methods to align the 3D view to a custom orientation :

  • one using the 3D cursor orientation,

enter image description here

  • one using a "custom transform orientation".

enter image description here

If you're interested, you can download the add-on or have some details here : Align2Custom add-on

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