having problem with 3D SpacePilot.. need help..

[texaspete]

Hi all, It's me Texaspete. I have a Dell Precision 470 with 4g of ram with NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI graphics card. I am running PRo/E Wildfire 2.0 Build 140; I purchased a SPacePilot some months ago and I have noticed a problem. The spacepilot can zoom and pan with ease, my setting are at 50%; But when I try to rotate the 3d model, the model just barely moves; so I increase the sensitivity to maximum and the changes are barely noticeable. I call 3dconnexion support - all I got from them was "this is a known issue with Wildfire 2.0 and 3.0". Do y'all have any insight to bandaid the problem.
thanks in advance - Texaspete

 

[mjcole]

Texaspete,

I have a couple Ideas but let me state first off that 3D Connexion seems to keep making their drivers and UI cuter and less functional with each release and for that reason I always keep the older install files cause I know those versions work.

One thing that might cause the problem you're seeing is if you have Dominant Axis Filter turned on it will only allow you to pan or spin along a single axis at a time which could slow you down when panning.

The older versions of the 3DX-Ware used to have an advanced settings option that had two sliders one Called Precision and the other Threshold which I believe allowed you to set speeds like you can for mouse Acceleration. This displayed a graph of (ball movement X) vs. (Speed Y). I believe they just have it set for linear response now.

I guess they are trying to reduce the amount of options for the device to make it easier to set up the device. I'm glad that it finally works on Google Earth even though the movement differs from how it works on CAD programs.

I have the installs for the following Driver versions
v5.9.2, v6.3.3

What version Driver Version are you using?

Michael

 

[mjcole]

The other option I forgot to mention is the config.pro option
SPIN_RATE_ZOOM_SENSITIVE Yes*/No
which I makes the model spin more slowly when you are zoomed in.

As shown above the option is turned on by default Yes*, so set it to No and see if that helps.

Michael

 

[texaspete]

hi Mjole, I just got your emails, I changed my config.pro to the options you stated "SPIN_RATE_ZOOM_SENSITIVE Yes*/No" I set the setting to "Yes". The changes were minimal. Just to give you some idea I changed the senisitive of the Spacepilot to maximum and got an improvement but the better driver was the driver that came with the disk. (i'm a jobsite and I have to wait till Saturday to get the disk). Just to let you know I twist the knob on the controller till it physical stops. I looked on 3dconnexions website and I see lots of comments about slow spinning / rotation of 3d models (people using Pro/E 2.0 and 3.0) on their forum. The setting you mention was frequently mention with mimimial resolution. The version of driver I have is 3.3.6 ( the latest from there website).
i just thought of this, Could it be the Video driver? I'm going to down load the latest driver from Nvidia. PTC website listed this for Dell 470 nvidia 3450 driver 6.14.10.8169
The Nvidia website has a different number - I don't understand it but I'm downloading it anyway.
I'll keep you posted.
Texaspete

 

[anyoldname]

I concur with the theory that the latest drivers have been simplified with a lot of the most useful functionality removed. I tried the latest driver from 3D Connexion's website and found that it made my Space Pilot completely useless for 3D CAD work so went back to my original 2 year old driver...... Its a shame everything needs to be dumbed down nowadays.