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Never used one but have read some stuff about them..... Anyone run one with SolidWorks and or have any recommendations?
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Never used one but have read some stuff about them..... Anyone run one with SolidWorks and or have any recommendations?
Not Solidworks, but Pro/E ... I love it. Not the mouse one tho, my hand likes the round Spaceball better. And I don't use too many of the buttons, but you might. Mostly I just use it to spin and move things around.Never used one but have read some stuff about them..... Anyone run one with SolidWorks and or have any recommendations?
I have used them for years, and feel crippled without one. I have found myself reaching for it instinctively even when it's not there, and have been entertained when I see others do the same! It becomes that ingrained in your workflow.
The basic SpaceNavigator is all you need. The flashier ones just take up more deskspace and all the extra buttons are not that useful. I had one for a while and went back to the navigator.
However, the Solidworks implementation has a few bugs that are extremely annoying and haven't been fixed in the decade or so that I've been using it; Dynamic highlight and view manipulation are basically mutually incompatible in solidworks, if you move the mouse around the model while trying to rotate it the scene rotation will stutter horribly and lock up momentarily while it highlights whatever is under the mouse. They added a workaround for this that disables dynamic highlighting while there is active input from the spacemouse. It's basically mandatory to have this turned on because it barely functions otherwise. However, when this is turned on you can expect to have to manually go to the settings and turn dynamic highlighting back on frequently. One more on the list of trivial little things that are making me despise solidworks more by the day.
I use the wireless version with only the two side buttons and still find it extremely useful. I map the side buttons to control and alt, often used as click modifiers for common actions. I may end up getting the larger one as well, but honestly only so that I can have control, alt, AND shift.
I will note that I've used the wired and wireless compact version, and the wireless has a sturdier base and slightly higher build quality imo. It's also a bit more expensive.
Maybe they have changed them over the years, but my wired one is heavy enough to knock someone out with a gentle tap.
I'm using an older version of solidworks and I have found that occasionally when I shut it down and re-start it doesn't recognize the mouse, even though it is turned on in the add-ons (or whatever its called). Mastercam doesn't do this so I don't think it is the mouse. I have to re-install the mouse software to get solidworks to "see" it again.
I have used a Spaceball/Spacemouse since about 1995, when they first came out. I would never go back. What some may not know though is that the 3DConnexion devices also have functionality in an awfeul ot of other programs. Word, Excel, Adobe Reader and many others.
Paul
I haven't seen that one for a few years, but yes I do remember that happening once or twice. Pretty sure it is specific to SW also. There used to be a simple way to get it working again, in the start menu in the 3dconnexion folder there were two shortcuts - start driver and stop driver. Stopping and then starting would make it work without having to restart SW. I just looked and see those are not there any longer, there are two new ones "start 3dxware" and "stop 3dxware", I assume those do the same thing as the older versions.
I don't seem to have either?
edit: pic blows up for me when I clicky
In the Start Menu, not the program folder. Windows 10 here, but you get the idea
Reminds of this:I had some fun years ago when I realised it worked in google earth
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