Isn't ESC supposed to deselect the object(s) currently in play with the active tool?

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Select "Rotate One Point" tool.

Drag rectangle to select multiple objects.

Rotate.

(Now I want to let go of them to select another set to rotate)

ESC ... yeah? no. ESC. ESC. ESC. Grrrr...

Change to Selection Tool.

Click -anywhere- but on an object (to clear all objects selected)

Change back to Rotate One Point tool.

<Start at the top again>

Video Example: https://youtu.be/hm4owTfQEyY

Alternate Example, using the Selection Tool only, which at least results in less clickery.

https://youtu.be/7qsI-hS9_G0

I'll have to check with development. I don't recall Esc ever deselecting objects.  I do remember it canceling the current tool.

>>Isn't ESC supposed to deselect the object(s) currently in play with the active tool?

ESC will abort out of the current command or terminate a series of inputs. 

If a tool is designed to deselect when you enter the command, then aborting the tool will deselect  as part of starting over.  Not all tools deselect when you enter the tool.

If you are looking for a quick key to Deselect, you could assign a short cut to Edit: Deselect. 

Tim

I assigned Edit -> Deselect to a keypress whilst exploring that, and .. it wasn't pretty.

But I think I had thoroughly upset the apple cart during that session, as I was having all kinds of odd results. Things I need to run down again for duplication.

I really want to say though, that it sure seems like hitting ESC with the Selection Tool and other tools in when behaving similarly to the Select Tool, that ESC would deselect the item.

If for no other reason than that Edit -> Deselect right now, does not have a key assigned to it, and you can see where using some of the tools on successive objects does not really flow. As I show, so I've rotated that object, now I want to select another one. If Deselect is what is required, and as default has no assigned key, that makes things a bit more of a hassle.

I'd like to re-visit this:

I got out TCM V6 again and it does exactly what I'm saying in the first post.

I want to say that V7 still had the same behavior, but V9 and V10 most certainly do not.

In V6, hitting ESC at any point will do one of two things:

If nothing is currently selected, it cancels out the current tool and reverts to the Arrow (Select Tool).

If an/any object/objects is/are selected, it/they will be de-selected.

Hitting ESC a second time afterwards will then also revert to the Select Tool now that no objects are selected.

Where I mentioned that things were not pretty with the deselect option in the current release:

In V10, using the keyboard to de-select items while started with a tool leaves the whole thing in an un-usable state until a new tool is selected from the palette.

Example:

Draw a couple separate lines.
Switch to the rotate tool.
Pick a line. (Click on one) ... and then clicking it again will rotate it as expected.
Do De-Select All via keyboard or menu pull down.

Notice that the tool state does not change, you are still being prompted to rotate the item(s) about a point.
Now hit ESC and it will prompt for item(s) to be selected. If you don't hit ESC you can't do anything else with that currently selected tool.

Where as in V6 one ESC would de-select the item(s), and return the tool to prompting to select an object, a second ESC would then revert to the Select Tool as the currently active tool.