Blender's New Official Pie Menu Addon

Since the release of 2.72, we have seen a plethora of great new additions to Blender, but one great addition is one of the new official addons now packaged with Blender, the Pie Menu addon. Many may not see this as too great of an addon, but for new users, and people without hardware that caters to some of the most used hotkeys may find this to be extremely helpful. So without futher adieu, let's start using the awesome addon.

Fisrt let's turn this addon on, by going to Blender User Preferences, selecting the Addon section, and search for "pie" in the search field, or manually navigating to the User Interface category. This is a Community addon, so if you do not have that highlighted in the "Supported Level", it will not show. Once you see it, check the box, and Save User Settings. That's it! It's ready to start being used. The great thing about this addon, is that even for the newest of users, it makes things so much easier. Starting out, let's start with the default cube, and go ahead into Edit Mode, by pressing Tab. See the new cool radial menu that just popped up? Now you can choose what mode you want to be in by selecting it from the list via the mouse, or number keys. The cool part about this, is for those of you new users, you will now know what modes are available to you in certain situations. TIP: Once you get use to the menu, you can quickly choose the selection by pressing tab, and moving your mouse in the direction of the option. No click, or key press! You can change this option in the User Preferences under Interface, at the bottom right corner, where you'll see some other options for this addon.  Next we have the Z key, that you would usually use to switch from solid, to wiremesh, and back. Now it also pops up a radial menu with options to switch to the different shading modes, as well as the option to shade smooth, and flat. Now for one of the best ones. If you are someone that has a laptop without a numpad, or doesn't have a mouse with numpad keys on it, or you just find yourself disliking the need to traverse to that side of the keyboard, then this next one you are going to love. If you press Q now, it will now pop up a radial menu with all of your view options. That's right, top, bottom, front, back, left, right, ortho, perspective, local, view all, quad view, and more all there. The only thing that's missing is the ability to step to a direction like you would with 2, 4, 6, 8, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. With the addon, you can now add hotkeys to your own pie menus! You can find out more here at the Blender Wiki. Continuing on! If you press the period key, you can switch your pivot point, from Bounding Box Center, 3D cursor, Active Elements, Median Point, Individual Origins, and turn on Center Points. If you press Ctrl + Shift + Tab, you guessed it, snapping points! Lastly, if you press Ctrl + Spacebar, you can change your Manipulator, and turn it on and off. So now you may see the power of the pie menus. The default settings are great for new users, but has the flexibility, and speed (once you get use to it) for even the most savvy professional. So if you missed the release notes on this addon, or just didn't know it existed, it's time to turn it on!