Blender Navigation Solutions on a Mac: Add a Three Button Mouse, Scroll Wheel, and Numeric Keypad Emulation

Apparently, in Blender, (a free 3D modeling / animation / game software that I am beginning to learn), there are many navigation functions that are crucial to using the software. You for example need a three button mouse, preferably with a scroll wheel, and it really should have a number pad. What is a numeric keypad? A numeric keypad consists of those number keys on the side of your keyboard: not number keys 1 through 0 on the top from your keyboard.

Well, I have a problem. My computer is a laptop (aka “laptop”), and it’s a Mac. My Mac doesn’t come with a mouse and it certainly doesn’t come with a number pad. So can I still use Blender? That I have to do? Today, I will show you how I solved these problems and how you can solve them too.

Before doing that, I want to mention a few things. First, in my quest to solve my navigation problems, I discovered that we had an Apple “Magic Mouse” in the house. Thinking my problems were solved, I happily set it up to work with my laptop, only to find that a “Magic Mouse” does not have a center button. The first thing I’ll show you today is how to give a “Magic Mouse” that middle button.

Second, I read online forums that said you could mimic a numeric keypad by clicking the function key (fn) plus certain letter keys (like J, K, L, U, I, etc.), but for some reason, this was not not working on my computer. For those of you who are experiencing the same problem, I will show you the answer that I found through an intensive Google search … so now if you have found this article, you don’t need to look any further!

The solution, to both problems, is quite simple: you only need to download two programs that will allow you to add a central button and emulate the numeric keyboard.

Steps to add a center button

1. Download MagicPrefs at http://magicprefs.com/.

2. Open MagicPrefs preferences.

3. Select “Click on the middle axis of a finger”. (Note that there are many other changes you can make with MagicPrefs … I didn’t take the time to play around with it, but it seems like it has a lot of potential.)

Steps to emulate a numeric keypad

1. Download the KeyRemap4MacBook PrefPane at http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/.

2. Open the KeyRemap4MacBook preferences.

3. Select “Change number key”. If you are having difficulty finding the “Change numeric password” option, try entering “num” in the search box. You may have to scroll down once or twice, but it should show up.

Well that’s it! Simple enough, huh? Hope this helps someone like it helped me!

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