Benefits of Spaceball?

[NorthwesternDesign]

Some of my coworkers recommend that I get a spaceball. Its been years since I have tried one and I never could get the hang of it. One slight bump and my view goes haywire. I have recently been doing some web review meetings with my screen being the center of attention. Others involved in the meeting ask me to zoom in here or there, rotate it around, etc.... I wouldn't normally have this much trouble, but each time I selected my rotate point, it would pick some other point that I did not want. Would a spaceball help in this case? I might be willing to try it again, but I would like to hear what other users have experienced.

 

[NorthwesternDesign]

Basically, I am looking for practical advice...if a spaceball is easier, why is it easier. Thanks.

 

[mmauldin]

My efficiency drops by 50% when I don't have my space ball. The ability to pan, zoom , and rotate in a intuitive manner makes a huge difference to me, so much so that I instinctively try to use the space ball in every application including spreadsheets, browsers, etc.

As for your screen going haywire, you can adjust the sensitivity of the space ball to a point where it will barely move the display. Also, I have found that setting the device to "dominate axis" greatly improves its control-ability.

 

[Dave K]

Once you get the hang of the 3D motion device, you'll manipulate it without even thinking about it, and when you use a computer without one, you'll be lost.

Adjust the settings to be slow at first, then as you get the hang of it, speed it up.

-Dave

NX 5.0.6.3mp7

 

[edgray]

The main advantage I see is that your left hand is no longer relegated to just picking your nose. You will now have two hands in on the work of modeling the part. Without it you must wait for the mouse hand to position the part before you start the feature creation/modification picks. With the Spaceball there is considerable overlap. I also am lost without it.

 

[NorthwesternDesign]

Thank you all for the advice! I am looking into getting one.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I've been using a 'Spaceball' since they looked like this...

...and cost over $1500.

Currently I have 3, a SpacePilot Pro in my office, a SpaceNavigator for at home and a SpaceNavigator for Notebooks when I'm on the road.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[teookie]

Space ball FTW!

Also featured in that terrible flick "GI joe" as a missile aiming device...

 

[Dave K]

Even that old spaceball is better than the old dial pad, aka "nipple knobs" that they gave me way back in the day, because a new spaceball wasn't in the budget at the time.

-Dave

NX 5.0.6.3mp7

 

[JohnRBaker]

...the old dial pad, aka "nipple knobs"...

You mean like the ones shown here:

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[tk369]

I still use a 4000FLX Spaceball I won as a door prize at a UG Users Group Conference years ago.
The nice thing about Spaceballs is that you can 'rev them up' or 'tone them down' in regards to the speed applied to zoom, rotate and pan. So 'bumping' against it may have little effect depending on your settings.
A Spaceball will become your BFF!

ted kralovic

VisVSA, NX-6, Macbook, iPhone 3GS, among others

 

[Dave K]

"You mean like the ones shown here:"

Exactly!! that thing gave me nightmares, I could crash the Unix workstation I had, pretty much on command with those knobs. The button pad was gone by then though, I only used it when I first started on CAD with Anvil 4000.

-Dave

NX 5.0.6.3mp7

 

[imagitec]

"The main advantage I see is that your left hand is no longer relegated to just picking your nose."

I use a keyboard with a trackpad and never have to move either hand to pan, zoom, rotate or any other task, effortlessly. Most of my toolbars are turned off because I have keystroke shortcuts to perform 90% of what I would need icons for. I'd wager I'm more productive - in the limited sense being discussed here - than most of my coworkers, who use trackballs.

Rob Campbell, PE

 

[wecurb]

"than most of my coworkers, who use trackballs" rjc: trackballs and spaceballs are two entirely different animals. Whereas, one can force a mouse or trackball to zoom, pan or spin, that is a crippling process eliminating the ability to concurrently do those functions while using the pointing device to "point". While my left hand can process a view orientation, my right hand is already at the command that I am targeting to perform when the orientation is established.

 

[imagitec]

I meant spaceballs.

Rob Campbell, PE

 

[DaSalo]

So can someone educate those of us of a younger generation as to exactly what those "nipple knobs" are, how they worked, and what are all those other input devices? That looks just like a Ouija board in the center of the desk!

 

[Dave K]

Each knob had one function:
Zoom
Rotate about X
Rotate about Y
Rotate about Z
Pan right/left
Pan up/down
?
?

The pad with all the keys, was just that, essentially short cut keys to various functions.

The ouija board looking thing, was like your mouse, it moved the cursor on the screen, and you could pick some functions with the buttons on it, and the location on the board.

It's been a few years, so I don't recall everything they did.

-Dave

NX 5.0.6.3mp7

 

[pracslipkerm]

Hey DaSalo
Correct me if I'm wrong John, but the one in the middle of the desk looks like a digitiser tablet. Multiple buttons on the pointer, which had a wire cross hair which you moved over the points on the tablet and button clicks activated various commands - totally customisable (some had 12 buttons, giving 12 functions per point on the tablet). Print out your own overlay, program your tablet and you had a much more productive way to draw. I used one when learning CAD on AutoCAD 9. Certainly brings back some memories!


Cheers
Steve Griffiths

If you want to make apple pie from scratch, first you must create the universe!

 

[JohnRBaker]

As for the datatablet overlay, in the mid 80's we introduced a lower cost Drafting only product, known as UGDD which had a tablet overlay interface as shown below:

As for the button box, that was what was known as the PFK (Programm Function Keyboard) which was part of UG up until UG V10.0 which was released in 1993. Here's closer look at the one in the picture:

And here's what a Unigraphics station looked like when I started to use the software back in 1977:

We've come a long way ;-)

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[DaSalo]

Very cool, thanks for sharing those great photographs. How common would a workstation like that have been in 1977 John? At a major corporation like GM, or whoever was using UG at that time, would there have been one workstation for every 100 drafting boards, more, less?