Key + drag item over blueprint = only fills matching ghosts

[drvi]

You've created a blueprint that you want to build many times in the early game. The blueprint contains 4-5 entity types but they are often rotated and/or positioned in a way that makes it hard to place the them quickly.

Using the blueprint saves you some mental effort when you want to reuse this particular pattern, but what about the actual "manual" effort?
Until you get robots (or nanobots...), there isn't much you can do about that, afaik.

So how about there was a key that you can press that would in combination with click-dragging while holding an entity only place that entity into matching ghost images and nowhere else?

[drvi]

see e.g. https://youtu.be/iHSobh2rtyg?t=6m (6:00 -- 6:06)

[nemostein]

see e.g. https://youtu.be/iHSobh2rtyg?t=6m (6:00 -- 6:06)

Exactly!!

Being able to use blueprints early on is great to plan the factory, but it's only a visual guide at the moment...
It bugs me that once you place a assembly machine over a blueprint with some recipe it is constructed without the recipe and you have to select it again.
Same with orientation.