Smadge Cursor Tools

Ever noticed you use shape keys or an armature and you wanna snap the 3D Cursor to selected but it get's placed somewhere else?
I created this with the help of ChatGPT and Serpens for Blender to fix this issue for me, as I wasn't able to find an addon that does the same stuff. If there is, let me know, they probably did a better job than ChatGPT.

As I used ChatGPT again please insert a 0 as price and as tip as well, you don't need to have any bad feelings not giving anything as ChatGPT did the heavy lifting, rather give that money/tip to real developers. I mostly did the Ui part and Add Aligned Empty At 3D Cursor, which I used Serpens for and I still pray for no bugs.

I share it even though there might be bugs I haven't encountered yet. I added some Debug feature (fun fact, which was once buggy too) that might help me track them down. I only tested it on 4.2 yet.

Features:

• Snaps the 3D Cursor in the correct location and tries to align itself with the face or edge. For a single Vert it will take it's normal vector into account
• Quickly add an Empty that will be aligned to the 3D cursor location and rotation. (I really hope I got all the bugs out)
• Chose a collection the Empty shall be stored in.
• If in Armature Mode or Armature Edit Mode you are able to snap the 3D cursor to a bone head or tail. If you then click on Create Aligned Empty, the empty will be named after the active bone.
• Debug Mode, mainly for myself to find where I messed up. (Creates a text file as log inside the Blender file, but it will be removed when debug mode is turned off)

Purposes I created it for:

Quickly create an Empty at a bone tail, and use it as IK target (that way I can Pose Characters in Object mode too.)
Snap the 3D cursor to the real face and not rest pose with no shape keys enabled (Blenders default behavior) and being able to edit a face or edge easier and faster. (One can even use Cursor as Transform Orientation then, or as Transform Pivot Point)

Why Smadge as a name?

I ran into a lot of issues, it started as 3D Cursor Tools. In the end I sticked with Smadge Cursor Tools.

Known issues:

If 2 vertices that are connected are selected, even though the other ones you select aren't, then the script things it shall snap to an edge.
If you Edit/Pose Multiple Armatures at once (both are active and editable at the same time) there might be issues. As long it is one Armature it should hold up pretty good.

Changelog:

Smadge Cursor Tools 1.2 - 30th November 2024;

New features added (You can find them under Bone Functions):

• Create Aligned Bone adds a bone that is aligned with the 3D cursor. It adds it to the active armature. If you wanna have it on a new one you first add a new armature make it active and use that button.
• Bone length is for the initial length of the newly created bone, but it always changes the actives bones length, no matter if it was created with Smadge or not.
• Flip bone direction: Keeps the head of the bone at it's current direction, but it let's the tail face the other direction while maintaining the bones length.

Updated that the icons of the dropdown menus are normal even in Blender 4.3

I needed the bone feature, since I wanted to add a bone for a handle bar for a bicycle but it had to be aligned and I wasn't gonna do it manually. So I added this feature and share it here. Whenever I need a new feature I will add it and share it no matter how little success this addon has no worries. Since I do it for my own sake anyways.