I am a new player to this game, and I play with an Xbox controller on PC, so I thought I should share my feedback on this.
The problem:
To equip something to the radial menu you have to go into your inventory select the item you want, bring up the radial menu, select the place you want to place it, Click the place button (A on the controller). then you need to exit the inventory and bring up the radial menu and select it to equip it. However, the worst part is when you are trying to replace an item that is already equipped (e.g. a touch or rope). Then you are unable to do this and must exit the inventory and then unequip it, then you must do it all over again.
Another issue is when you only want to place an object, like a workbench. Then you need to do all the steps above to place it in the radial menu and then replace the item you had there before after you are done placing it.
The solution:
I would prefer if you don’t need to click “A” when you want to place the item in the radial menu, you have already open up the menu and selected the slot, another action is not needed. Other games do not have that so that is why its unintuitive for new players. I had so many cases in the begging where I had to repeat the process because I forgot to click the button.
Secondly and this is the most important one in my opinion. If an item is equipped it should automatically unequip when you try to replace it.
Third, for placing single objects to the word it would be good if we had a button that we could click directly from the inventory that brings up the build mode directly, without placing it to the radial menu.
For veteran players this may not seem as a big deal, because you have already gotten used to how it works but, in my opinion, this would improve the usability and remove some frustration.