Factorio Forums

Current:
Building belts manually means using R to rotate a lot, switching to splitters, switching to tunnels, switching back to beltes, rotate etc.

Problem:
Rather clunky UX flow. Pick up, rotate, rotate, place, open inventory, put away, take other, close inventory, rotate, rotate, place, rotate, place etc. Basically: You rotate a lot.

This can be done better and with better UX and QoL.

Idea:
Since right mouse button is unused when building on free ground (non-blocked), you could easily make it a quick select for rotation direction. Click, drag, release. Direction of drag = Facing of object. No more 'r' 'r' 'r' to get the right facing.

Profit!


PS:This actually should also work on blocked ground, but might lead to accidental deletions in the world. A case for prototyping and feeling it 1st hand I guess.

It sounds like you don't know the pipette tool exists. "Q" by default: anything you mouse over and press "Q" will be put into your cursor if you have one in your inventory and rotated to match the entity in the world.

I put the eyedropper/picker/pipette tool on my middle mouse button and have R for rotate one way and remap shift+R to one of my mouse buttons, means I can do the things you suggest with my mouse mostly.