Touch Screen Navigation Pad 1.0 for Blender

About Navigation Pad:

Navigation Pad is an on-screen navigation control pad for Blender. This keypad lets you navigate in 3D view and is useful especially for owners of touch tablets, pen tablets, and notebooks without numerical keypads who like to work with Blender on these devices. I made this gadget for my Fujitsu T904 notebook which features a pen and touch Wacom digitizer screen. External 3rd party virtual keyboards will not work well in Blender because Blender requires the mouse pointer inside the 3D view in order to process keyboad input. Hence, if you click your mouse on an external keyboard app Blender will not process the key strokes. Navigation Pad however, is part of the 3D view, and unlike other virtual keyboards, Navigation Pad occupies little screen space and maximizes work area. It can be reduced to the size of a string of icons, even smaller than the Blender tool bar. I personally don't like bulky UI elements, because I want to see my work piece, not the tools I use to create it. I guess you are familiar with this... Navigation Pad was tested in Blender 2.8, 2.9, and 3.0 alpha. Other versions might work as well, since only standard Blender API is used in the source code.

Features:

• 7 standard views: front, back, left, right, top, bottom, camera*

• toggle between orthographic and perspective view

• zoom in and out

• zoom to selection

• tilt left and right (roll)*

• orbit up and down (pitch)*

• orbit left and right (yaw)*

• selectable rotation angle 1 or 5 degrees

• panning up, down, left, right

• pad is resizable according to your liking

These features are available on-screen without a numerical keypad. It works with mouse, pen, or finger touch. Of course, you can still use your hardware keypad ... if you have one.

How to use Navigation Pad:

Install and activate the zip file you will receive in Blender's preferences, then hit <N> in 3D view. On the addon tabs at the right 3D view border you will find Navigation Pad under "NPad". Click on it and the pad will pop up. Hover your mouse or pen over the buttons and it will show you tool tips. You'll get the hang of it in no time and will not want to work without it any more. For the future I am planning to add Blender hotkeys to the pad in order to further improve work flow on touch screens and make a keyboard unnecessary. If you like Navigation Pad, leave me a rating or comment. 

Happy Blendering!

Cloud62

*) roll, pitch, and yaw are locked in camera view. In this case you need to rotate the camera.

Navigation Pad in Blender 2.9 on a pen/touch Wacom screen (Fujitsu T904)

Navigation Pad in its slim shape