Box selecting while the active tools are enabled I agree would be nice to support, at least in addition to the current way. The trouble is that the other developers did not agree to add this capability to the active tools. I might be able to work around it by using left click for box selection and middle drag to activate the tool, but that only really works for tools that have gizmos, so it's not a very nice all-round solution. We cannot use this for things like Knife, Inset or Bevel, so it would introduce inconsistency.

I don't remember this particular discussion, but I don't see a fundamental reason why it should not be done. This could be added to the left-click select tweaks tasks, at least to make it possible to configure setups like this. It's related to allowing to selected items behind a gizmo.

@Brecht Van Lommel (brecht): Ok, great, I will do that. It was my impression that adding box select to the Drag Action was not a way we wanted to go?

But if it is, what is then the point of the persistent gizmo popover?

Anyway, I will add it to the left click task if it's not already there.

I would not expect it to be a specific drag action, just an operator that is always on like click select. And then it's up to the active tools to define if they consume all drag events, or only when over the gizmo.

@Brecht Van Lommel (brecht) That is already possible to do in the keymap afaik - it's relatively easy to set up.

The trouble is that:

1. It only works for tools that have gizmos. If there is no gizmo, then there is then no way to actually use the tool. Box select could be set up for the gizmo tools only, but what if you switch to the Inset tool, for example? Then you suddenly cannot box select.
2. The current way is actually rather nice sometimes, esp for things like scaling where you don't need to drag from the little fiddly circle, but you can drag from anywhere on the screen.

Thanks for such a quick response, guys!

My bad, I didn't try to scale the object uniformly outside of it (far from the center), I thought it's gonna work only from the center like it is in Maya etc. But as far as box-selecting while using move/rotate/scale tools is still desirable then you have to decide whether:

1. move/rotate/scale tools can be operated by click-draging outside the object (which makes sense for scaling, and very little sense for moving and rotating) and no simultaneous box-select possible, which is not cool

2. move/rotate/scale tools operate only by interacting with their gizmos (Maya etc) and left click-drag outside the object can be used for simulteneous box-selecting. Which is COOL. But in this case, the scale issue comes again which would not need the proximity sensitivity.

I'm not personally arguing that select box is better than drag anywhere for transform tools. There are definitely pros and cons to this, not having to put your mouse in a specific location for transform is a feature that I really like in Blender. Just if we want to support it I think it can fit fine in the current system.

Mainly what I think would be nice is if there was an optional tweak mode for tools, where if you drag on an item it immediately selects it and starts the tool. And if we do that, then some more control over the drag action can fit in too. You could have an enum with the following choices:

• Transform: drag anywhere to transform
• Tweak: drag on item to immediately select and transform it
• Select: fall through to selection operators outside the active tool (which could include box select)

I don't consider this high priority, but to me it seems like a good fit to extend the existing design in the future.

@Brecht Van Lommel (brecht) yes I agree that sounds like a really nice improvement that could be added.