The 3D Cursor in Blender

This is getting into minor details of Blender, and you can get by quite happily never knowing it. This post is more a way for me to record what I have discovered.

The 3D cursor is a point in space in the Blender virtual world. When you create a new object, it will be created here. By default it is at the origin, and that is often fine, but occasionally you want to move it - perhaps to get it back to the origin because you moved it by accident, or perhaps because you are working well away from the origin. Certain operations use the 3D cursor as their centre, and being able to move it is help then too.

Note that the cursor also has a rotation; I have yet to find a time when it is useful to change that.

Here are the various ways t move the 3D cursor.

Cursor tool

Select the Cursor tool in the Toolbar, then left click where you want the cursor. I think it maintains the current depth. That means if you do this while aligned to, say, the x-axis, the x value will not change. If you are not aligned to an axis, it will be complicated, so I suggest not doing that!

[Shft]-RMB

Hold shift and right click does the same as above - and frankly is rather more convenient.

[Shft]-C

Hold shift and hit C to move the cursor to the origin.

[Shft]-S

Hold shift and hit C to get the Snap menu. This has options to move the cursor to the centre of the current  selection, the origin, the nearest visible grid point or the active object/face/edge/vertex.

The last of these is probably the best way to get the cursor where you want it, but at an exact location.

Sidebar

Press N to get to the sidebar, and go to the View tab, down to the 3D Cursor properties. Edit as desired.

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