Spaceballs (3d mouse) 4

[Jakek]

Are you using a 3D mouse/spaceball?

Why?/Why not?

Thanx for the input.

 

[in10ss]

anyone know where to get a solidworks addin for the spaceball 3003 FLX?

thx,
in10ss

 

[roguewrench]

Does everyone know they dropped the price of the Space Traveler to $199. We ended up buying 12 of them for our office.

CJ Goodrich
Product Design Engineer
Leatherman Tool Group
Portland, Oregon

http://www.leatherman.com

 

[ttraser]

Here is a site with tons of drivers for 3dconnexion products. Save it to your favorites....

http://66.249.93.104/translate_c?hl...ch?q=spaceball+3003+windows+xp&hl=en&lr=&sa=G

TTraser
Engineer (LSD)

http://WWW.KWAUTOMOTIVE.COM

 

[alanled]

Ive been using my spacepilot for about 12 months now and just love it, best buy Ive had!!!!

 

[mjcole]

Hey all you spaceball users and non users,

I'm currently using the spaceball 5000 I had a buddy order it for me using a student discount so I got it for $200 and it is especially usefull with a large forum post like this one. I think 3dconnexion originally had customers download individual drivers but the new drivers for the 5000 work with most programs including IE Netscape and Adobe. The adobe driver reduces the time it takes to Examine a large PDF and the Zoom toggle helps to keep the PDF zooming in our out inadverdently.

If you do have to work without one I'd suggest using a 5 button mouse where you can set the side buttons to act as the Ctrl or Shify kez so you can pan zoom and rotate with ease. I know on Catia and UG you can do all this with combinations of the 3 mouse buttons.

I'm sure you can email 3dconnexion and have them send you older drivers. I was actually annoyed with the new configuration UI with the spaceball 5000, luckily I kept the old version to be safe. The new interface has been limited by the number of windows you have to deal with.

*One Quick Tip for people updating to the new Spaceball drivers.
You can keep the customized 3DX macros that you might have created on the older versions.

To do so save your old config files user##.scg or sldworks.scg open these files with a text editor like notepad and search for the string "BUTTON_CHARACTERS"
and you'll see something like what I've shown below

BUTTON_CHARACTERS =
{
{ USER_001, },{ USER_002},etc
{ USER_015, "UG - Layer - Move item", " +18:540540929 -18:3224895489 +82:1245185 -82:1245185 +77:3276801 -77:3276801" },
{ USER_016, "KEY - CTRL", " +17:1900545 -17:3223126017" },
{ USER_017, "KEY - SHIFT", " +16:2752513 -16:3223977985" }
}

Copy the later entries and paste them into your new *.scg file and number them with the _### in the order you want them to appear in the list and save the file.

Michael

 

[foxbat1979]

All of the engineers here (3, including me) have been using a Spacepilot since we started using Solidworks about seven months ago.
As I already had some experience with these things from a couple of years back (with UGS) it was simply a MUST-HAVE for me with my colleagues being slightly sceptical about it.

We got a pretty good deal on them with a free-trial period but now nobody wants to do without them anymore.

Sr. Design Engineer
Solidworks 2006/DBWorks 2006 user
Special electric motors & centrifugal fans

 

[Plifter365]

Do any of you use a Spaceball 4000 FLX, with solidworks 2006, and windows XP? Im haveing some trouble to get mine to work. I am connected to my workstation with a USB to SERIAL adaptor. The spaceball works in all of the test programs, but not in solidoworks? Any help?

Thanks

 

[nathonrose]

Plifter365, I'm using a logitech spacemouse plus, but I'd imagine it's the same thing with yours. I needed to download the program specific drivers for it to show up as an add-in within solidworks... Yours may just be there to work, but you have to go into SolidWorks, Tools menu and open the add-ins and make sure "3D Control" or something of that sort of name is checked. That makes SolidWorks aware of the device.

 

[MEGCLAY]

we have nx4 and ideas12
using spacepilots
anybody know of the code that it uses to
program the buttons for shade and wireframe views
called 3dconnexion they could not help


example
BUTTON_CHARACTERS =

ug
{ USER_001, },{ USER_002},etc
{ USER_015, "UG - Layer - Move item", " +18:540540929 -18:3224895489 +82:1245185 -82:1245185 +77:3276801 -77:3276801" },
{ USER_016, "KEY - CTRL", " +17:1900545 -17:3223126017" },
{ USER_017, "KEY - SHIFT", " +16:2752513 -16:3223977985" }


ideas
{ USER_013, "shift", " +16:2752513 -16:3223977985" },
{ USER_014, "ctrl", " +17:1900545 -17:3223126017" }

 

[mjcole]

I'm Having trouble getting my spaceball to work on my SolidWorks Personal addition I have at home.

I think its Solid Works 2003, 3dconnextion said to enable a 3d device Add in but Add-ins does not show on my Tools menu as it says in the help section.

Does anyone else have or has had this problem in the past?

Thank you,

Michael

 

[JMirisola]

I've had that problem in '06 and '07 with my SpacePilot. When it happens, I reinstall the 3dconnextion software and everything works fine.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2MB RAM, nVidia 2500M

 

[JMirisola]

Oh and I love my SpacePilot. I have it at work and wish I had one at home. If my consulting picks up, I'll definitely be investing in one for home...

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2MB RAM, nVidia 2500M

 

[gwubs]

I have used a Spaceball 4000 & 5000 for 3 years now. Major productivity gains all around. Two pieces of advice; 1) Get a Spaceball 2) learn to use it - there is a learn curve, just like learning to use a mouse. Once you get used to a Spaceball, you will not go back.

 

[mjcole]

MEGCLAY,

To get what you want in terms of Shade Display which are usually icons. 3DX may have these programmed for the different softwares but if not you can do the following.

Hold down the Alt key and look for the underlined Characters.
Go to Configuration and Select new command.
Enter a descriptive title
VIEW: Display - Shaded or Wireframe, Hidden, No hidden etc.
Click in the User Macro area and then type the key sequence and it will record as you type.

If the display otpions are available in the Right Click Pop ups yu can try the Menu keyboard button which will show as <Application> when you type it in.

Solid works
Shaded Alt + V D S
Wireframe Alt + V D W

I've done this for UG but don't know if I created the Display Types.

Michael

 

[MEGCLAY]

Thanks Michael
it worked


ideas12


(ideas shade2 view display from a recored macro)
$ mpos :; /do so; ; dt shh appl canc

(as put into spacepilot)
<shift+4><Space>mpos<Space><Shift>+;;<Space>/do<Space>so;<Space>;<Space>dt<Space>shh<Space>appl<Space>canc<Enter>

(as shown in button characters in profile scg file)
{ USER_013, "SHADE VIEW", " +16:2752513 +52:327681 -52:327681 -16:3223977985 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +20:3801089 -20:3801089 +20:3801089 -20:3801089 +77:3276801 -77:3276801 +80:1638401 -80:1638401 +79:1572865 -79:1572865 +83:2031617 -83:2031617 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +186:2555905 -186:2555905 +8:917505 -8:917505 +16:3538945 +186:2555905 -186:2555905 -16:3224764417 +186:2555905 -186:2555905 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +191:3473409 -191:3473409 +68:2097153 -68:2097153 +79:1572865 -79:1572865 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +83:2031617 -83:2031617 +79:1572865 -79:1572865 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +186:2555905 -186:2555905 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +186:2555905 -186:2555905 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +68:2097153 -68:2097153 +84:1310721 -84:1310721 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +83:2031617 -83:2031617 +72:2293761 -72:2293761 +72:2293761 -72:2293761 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +65:1966081 -65:1966081 +80:1638401 -80:1638401 +80:1638401 -80:1638401 +76:2490369 -76:2490369 +32:3735553 -32:3735553 +67:3014657 -67:3014657 +65:1966081 -65:1966081 +78:3211265 -78:3211265 +67:3014657 -67:3014657 +13:1835009 -13:1835009" },