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That is easy.

It is the same as the flyover tool in VW does.

Or standard view rotation in Modo and with little oddities in C4D.

(Or Microstation, Archicad, Bricscad, ....)

 

I am not sure if I got the helicopter mode in VW right. Immediately changed axes assignment.

I know only two 3D Modes for Space Navigator.

 

1.

The Walkthrough Mode,

which I don't like,

where the Navigator moves your Head/Camera around the Objects.

(I think also standard VW 2017 SP4 Mode)

Like rotating Handle ccw, will make you (or your camera) look to the left, so the Object will

disappear on the right end of your screen

 

2.

The Flyover Mode,

which I prefer as said above,

where the Navigator handle rotates the Object.

 

Rotate the Handle ccw will rotate your object ccw,

pull the Handle to you, the Object will come near to you (= Zoom in),

pull it up, the model rises up.

And vice versa and the like.

 

 

And the best implementation for me is in Modo :

 

a)

Center of Rotation is the center of the view.

(There will appear a mark while navigating).

Somehow this does not work in VW, it always rotates about VW origin only for whatever reason

and it is very unlikely that my geometry of interest is ever there,

nor is the Navigator able to use the different mode settings of Flyover Tool.

 

Maybe, when there is a selection, to rotate about the selection as a center.

But nearly not necessary because a selection as point of interest for view rotation

may be very likely already in the middle of your view !

 

b)

The Lock Horizon Option is activated.

To prevent any Orbit Rotation (called Rolling ?)

(Like VW does, yeah !

But C4D unfortunately not, although it can prevent from Orbiting, for standard Mouse View Rotation)

 

c)

Modo found the right speed and acceleration settings that a 3DConnexion Device works noticeably smoother

than in any other App, out of the box.

 

 

BTW,

in a 2D View (= all orthogonal views)

Navigator does just the exact same as in chosen 3D Mode, except any rotation.

Like when in 3D Flyover Mode,

pull the Handle to the right - will push your Model/Plan to right.

 

But that is a matter of taste if you prefer to mirror Axis Ddirections in driver or better like

Handle up/down to 2D Zoom or prefer push front/back directions to Zoom.

Edited by zoomer
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On 2017-03-30 at 8:58 AM, JimW said:

It seems like it invokes the command in Vectorworks for "Front" view, and then obeys the default projection setting. I agree that when using a device like this a different behavior would be desired. I'm going to eat dogfood with my basic SpaceNavigator for awhile (nerd term for using this specific thing a bunch personally) for my next few projects and get a clear picture of what can be customized via a combination of device and Vectorworks settings and what we need to add more control for.

 

I'm giving my Space Navigator another try with VW2018 (I've tried to make it work the way I want in every version since maybe 2013. I've figured out a lot of it through trial and error. The help is more of a testament to what it can do rather than how to do it and the last Youtube video announcing the driver improvements for 2017 is just marketing. Neither of them give the nuts and bolts of making it work.

 

I'm trying to solve the issue described here and wondered if anyone has any advice. Is there any documentation about some of the items in the 3dConnexion application menu associated with VW pictured below?

 

59b957989560f_ScreenShot2017-09-13at9_04_32AM.png.3659513824a5cfe8a8e4227c9c36f803.png

 

Some of the items are unclear (how do "Save View 1 / Restore View 1" work for example, are these independent of "Saved Views" in VW? I tried adding a View 1 to my file without success), others could use labelling consistent with VW (ISO1 and ISO2 for example) and other items are completely missing (Top/Plan?). Ideally I would like to be able to toggle between a perspective, OpenGL rendered view and an Orthographic view (Top/Plan, Front, Side) in wireframe. Switch Projection sort of does this but why would I ever want to toggle through every mode it presents.

 

Does VW remember your preference for which mode you like in 3d+Perspective. I want VW to always act as it does in 3d non-perspective, with the object centre. Its confusing that VW doesn't just use the currently selected Flyover mode.

 

Thanks,

 

Kevin

 

 

 

Screen Shot 2017-09-13 at 9.05.35 AM.png

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1.

Kevin, we both seem to be the only VW users not liking Helicopter Mode.

I think you like the same "Flyover-like" Mode as I do.

 

With VW 2017 SP 4 latest 3D Connection single Mono-Mode,

with these Settings it works for me like in the past :

 

Screenshot-24.jpg.662e63cdeb8bc914d7e578ddb014daee.jpg

 

 

BTW

I prefer that "wrong" only option - that I can "correct" to my liking in the driver setteings,

much more than previous multi-modes which automatically switched, depending of

perspective vs orthogonal and such things.

 

 

2.

Saved Views.

For me it worked like that :

- Press View 1 Button for 3 seconds

- it will save a new saved view with a similar name

- change your View Window

- Press View 2 Button for 3 seconds

- it will save a new saved view with a similar name

- ....

 

Now you have created 2 saved views in VW which you can go to or switch between

by pressing the View 123 Buttons for a short period.

 

I am not sure what will happen if you change the names of those saved views created,

or if you can manually create a saved view in VW with a compatible naming scheme

that Enterprise may be able to use ....

 

 

Edited by zoomer
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7 minutes ago, zoomer said:

1.

Kevin, we both seem to be the only VW users not liking Helicopter Mode.

I think you like the same "Flyover-like" Mode as I do.

 

With VW 2017 SP 4 latest 3D Connection single Mono-Mode,

with these Settings it works for me like in the past :

 

Screenshot-24.jpg.662e63cdeb8bc914d7e578ddb014daee.jpg

 

 

BTW

I prefer that "wrong" only option - that I can "correct" to my liking in the driver setteings,

much more than previous multi-modes which automatically switched, depending of

perspective vs orthogonal and such things.

 

Thanks Zoomer. For me the defaults for orthogonal vs perspective are not the same. Not sure why. The more I play, the more I feel like it may be file specific. If I program a button to use the Switch Navigation function, I can switch them to be the same. The Space Navigator is very sensitive to switching between open files.....

 

7 minutes ago, zoomer said:

2.

Saved Views.

For me it worked like that :

- Press View 1 Button for 3 seconds

- it will save a new saved view with a similar name

- change your View Window

- Press View 2 Button for 3 seconds

- it will save a new saved view with a similar name

- ....

 

Now you have created 2 saved views in VW which you can go to or switch between

by pressing the View 123 Buttons for a short period.

 

I am not sure what will happen if you change the names of those saved views created,

or if you can manually create a saved view in VW with a compatible naming scheme

that Enterprise may be able to use ....

 

I only have a basic Space Navigator with 2 buttons so the view thing is a bit more complex. It seems that somehow VW is tagging specific saved views as being linked to the Space Navigator. When it says "View 1" its not a saved view named "View 1" nor is it the 1st saved view on the list. It specifically has to be saved using the "Saving View 1" command. I'm going to try creating a template that has a pair of saved views in it and then removing the "Saving View 1" commands from my radial menu.

 

Kevin

 

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19 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

I only have a basic Space Navigator with 2 buttons so the view thing is a bit more complex. It seems that somehow VW is tagging specific saved views as being linked to the Space Navigator. When it says "View 1" its not a saved view named "View 1" nor is it the 1st saved view on the list. It specifically has to be saved using the "Saving View 1" command. I'm going to try creating a template that has a pair of saved views in it and then removing the "Saving View 1" commands from my radial menu.

 

Ok, this gets weirder and weirder. If I create a new, clean file and press the button I've assigned to "Restore View 1" it will attempt to restore the previously saved view even though its not even present in the file...... 

 

Edit: These "saved" views seem to be per session even though they get saved into a document. If you restart VW the ability to recall them is gone on the Space Navigator.

 

KM

 

Edited by Kevin McAllister
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13 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Thanks Zoomer. For me the defaults for orthogonal vs perspective are not the same. Not sure why. The more I play, the more I feel like it may be file specific. If I program a button to use the Switch Navigation function, I can switch them to be the same. The Space Navigator is very sensitive to switching between open files.....

 

oooooh,

 

It's a long time since I was in a real perspective mode.

Enterprise has a menu button to switch between these modes.

But I set this to CMD as you need this on Mac.

 

But yesterday I tried re-activating the menu button (on another button)

and checked if there are any modes to switch - which there aren't.

It just opens the option menu with entries for Locks, Dominant Filter and Driver Settings Link.

 

Do you use already VW 2018 in multi pane modes ?

There it will stuck for me in either 2D vs 3D modes from the last active Pane, if I change to another

pane with a different 2D or 3D Mode and such things.

Edited by zoomer
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zoomer -

 

is the main reason you don't like the helicopter mode that it induces motion sickness?

 

I have sympathy as someone prone to motion sickness (I'll feel nauseous after a second of trying to read something in my hands  in a moving car) but luckily i don't seem to have issues using VW and the 3dconnexxion devices.

 

I'm surprised you don't also have problems with the orbit-type navigation you seem to prefer.

 

I wonder if motion-sickness issues will become more prominent as this kind of navigation (on big screens or even VR) becomes more widely used in CAD applications. It would be interesting to know if this is already a design problem that needs to be considered.

 

Regarding my preference for helicopter vs orbit modes - I too am an architectural user, largely navigating within spaces inside complicated objects rather than the space around an isolated object. Also, objects where the direction of gravity is highly significant.

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2 hours ago, line-weight said:

is the main reason you don't like the helicopter mode that it induces motion sickness?

 

I think it is 2 reasons :

- Motion Sickness which I can't do much against

- I really like standard view rotation and never wished for something else.

 

Same here with reading in a car.

And yes, the problems with VR seems to be another level of potential sickness.

 

Rotating the model is a completly different thing.

If, then the model gets sick, not me.

 

 

Motion sickness means that your your different sensors to check your location and orientation

in space send contradictory information to your brain.

(Eyes say : we are driving, ear and muscles say : no, we don't)

Brain thinks, we start hallucinating > must have eaten something poisoned.

Brain to stomach => Undo

Comes from deep evolution, still very useful but not compatible with 3D work and VR.

Individually more or less pronounced.

 

 

Before Space Navigators all Apps had the same View Rotation Tools.

And I always had some walkthrough option as an extra somewhere else. I tried these of course at

some point but never had any use for it.

I still want and need to rotate my View, or better, the Model inside that View.

3D Navigators are just a more haptic way to do so.

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43 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Motion sickness means that your your different sensors to check your location and orientation

in space send contradictory information to your brain.

(Eyes say : we are driving, ear and muscles say : no, we don't)

Brain thinks, we start hallucinating > must have eaten something poisoned.

Brain to stomach => Undo

Comes from deep evolution, still very useful but not compatible with 3D work and VR.

Individually more or less pronounced.

5

  

This is a really good and interesting way to describe motion sickness. :)  

There is an active research area in Human Computer Interactions called "Embodied Interactions" in which the researchers study how does human coordinate their sensory inputs with the motion outputs continuously. Different people have various reactions to the same interaction settings. Researchers are still trying to find the common ground in this area. One of the interesting research came to my mind -- http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2858226

 

To be honest, I spent some time to connect my haptic feedback from the 3D Mouse to what I see on the screen and get used to it (probably couple years on and off using it). However, once I connect them together, I can navigate to the right orientation much faster than a traditional mouse and keyboard settings. BTW, I'm pretty easy to get motion sickness as well.

 

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
2 hours ago, zoomer said:

I am a little concerned about the having 2 modes as I use navigation with key and pen

as least as often as a navigator.

1

Hi zoomer, I totally see your dilemma, a friend of mine had encountered the same decision, also had a tablet and a pen, unfortunately, we lost him to the dark side,

"you must unlearn what you have learned"

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He went to Autodesk ?

 

I never had any complaints with view navigations in all 3D Apps.

Zoom + Pan + Rotate is all I need, no matter which device.

(temporary non-Tool-interrupting)

 

Then came VW that decided to use MMB instead of any of the "real" MBs.

For such an important all time used function.

OK, So I bought a CADMouse from 3D connection to get a "real" button for this.

So far VW ok.

 

Now I use a Pen Display that works fine for every App.

The Pen even has a "real" MMB for VW Rotate + Pan.

But must realize that (only) VW has no "temporary non-Tool-interrupting" option

to Zoom in/out, beside a Scroll Wheel.

My 3D Navigator is just a temporary workaround to overcome that specific limit in VW.

Would it be such an effort to add a CTRL+SHIFT+MMB Zoom option,

like Zoom Tool 2nd Mode but without all time walkthrough-like acceleration

and non-tool-interrupting ?

 

(There are a lot of other common input devices that don't offer 3D-useful Wheel Scrolling

like Apples Magic Mouses, Touch Pads or standard Pen Tablets)

 

 

Letting Num+Text input beside, even Enterprise still doesn't allow to reject my keyboard

completely. So why not let my left hand simply rest on keyboard if I don't miss anything.

View Navigation comfort and ergonomic with Pen or Mouse for me is equal to a 3D

Navigator. (except that VW zoom thing of course)

But that is just my personal taste.

I am happy with anyone enjoying his or her 3D Navigator, Space Mouse, Enterprise.

 

I'm still thinking that currently Mouse+Keyboard is the optimal input method.

But will never give up the fun to draw a rectangle with my pen directly on my screen.

 

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31 minutes ago, zoomer said:

 

I'm still thinking that currently Mouse+Keyboard is the optimal input method.

But will never give up the fun to draw a rectangle with my pen directly on my screen.

 

1

 

I agree that Mouse+Keyboard (+3D Mouse) is still the best way to interact modern CAD tools, including Vectorworks. 

However, I did research on the stylus interaction before, and also agree the fun and creativity it provides.

 

btw - does your tablet support multi-touch? 

 

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Yes, it's the Touch version.

2 Finger Touch Zoom would(*) work fine(**) to Zoom in VW.

 

Unfortunately the "Scroll by Pen Movement" that simulates a scroll wheel does lag in VW,

also it would cost my "MMB"

 

(*)

Touch is off for 3D/CAD as I lay with my whole arms on my screen.

I would need long sleeved arms and gloves with finger cut outs to do so

 

(**)

Even a real mouse wheel zoom lags sometimes in VW (2017) for me, with crowded files,

as long as the cursor hovers over potential snapping points.

This does not happen 2 Finger Touch Zoom - I assume as there is no cursor hovering to snap points

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  • Member
1 hour ago, zoomer said:

(*)

Touch is off for 3D/CAD as I lay with my whole arms on my screen.

I would need long sleeved arms and gloves with finger cut outs to do so

 

So palm/arm rejection doesn't work or isn't good enough for you?

 

1 hour ago, zoomer said:

 

(**)

Even a real mouse wheel zoom lags sometimes in VW (2017) for me, with crowded files,

as long as the cursor hovers over potential snapping points.

This does not happen 2 Finger Touch Zoom - I assume as there is no cursor hovering to snap points

 

Yes, this is a good point!!

 

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1 hour ago, Chih-Pin said:

So palm/arm rejection doesn't work or isn't good enough for you?

 

It works ok but for one hand only, either left or right side.

But about every 20 minutes I may accidentally start any arbitrary App from my Dock with my elbow.

(mostly Solibri Model Checker)

 

Should keep my sleeves down ....

(Paint artists use it upright and with a glove)

But I do not have the typical flexible Cintiq stand. I like it as flat as possible.

 

Therefore no Space for the keyboard. I have it on top of the display. And therefore both arms on screen
 

 

Edited by zoomer
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  • 1 month later...

Hi All

 

I just thought I would take the time to post something that might help some people.

 

I am using a 3dconnexion spacepilot with VW 2017. I just purchased an Elecom trackball mouse which has been an absolute revelation in terms of accuracy and control, as with all new bits of kit I spent a bit of time allocating functions to buttons etc which led me to thinking that although I love my Space Pilot, it's always felt a bit limited in VW never working quite as well as I would hope, therefore reducing the amount that I used it, anyway today I decided that it was time I got this resolved. 

 

Issues I was having - 

 

2d and orthagonal navigation - useless - move the puck left or right up or down  and the geometry would disappear and then either if lucky reappear to the left or be miles away. in front views a rotation of the puck would result in a 90 degree change in view - front, right, back etc.

 

3d perspective views - significantly better but target view would regularly lose its fixed rotation point and other modes were less than satisfactory. 

 

I updated the driver for the Space Pilot and have the latest service pack for VW, but to no avail, so out of interest I opened up a file in VW 2016 and all the above issues weren't present.  So I went back into 2017 and went through all the preferences to see what could be causing the difference in performance and at last my Space Pilot is working as I always felt it should and as its price tag says it should!

 

Under the display tab in VW preferences at the bottom of the page is heading - NAVIGATION GRAPHICS: a drop down for this allows you to choose  - Best Compatibility through to Best Performance. By changing to best performance all the issues above were solved.

 

I'm sure many people have figured this out, but I was stumped so maybe this will help some other people.

 

Cheers

 

matt

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hmmh,

as promised a gave the Helicopter (?) Mode a try and set my old Space Navigator Axes back

to@Luis M Ruizsettings.

But it still "Spins" (*) around file origin instead of my camera.

 

(* Spin = what's not supported and has to be set to "Roll" for VW)

 

 

Am I in any wrong 3D Mode ?

Are there still 3DConnection 3D Mode options - and how do I get their setting from VW Menu ?

(I need the 2 buttons for Selection Tool and Fit View)

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Hi Zoomer

 

I haven't been following this thread very closely apart from posting my experience with navigation quality settings above, which made a huge difference to the usability of my Space pilot for me. I have attached my 3d Connexion mouse settings here which I won't bother going through as it gets complicated but these settings for my Space Pilot on my machine do exactly what I would want the controller to do, including

SPINNING AROUND MY CAMERA in Helicopter mode which sounds like what you want to get it to do. Apologies if this is how you already have yours set up, but this definitely works for me. 

 

Good luck with your problem.

settings.jpg

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Yes, that is exactly what I have.

Same as what Luis postet some pages above.

 

And it looks reasonably (as long as one thinks a helicopter mode is reasonably)

beside the spinning around camera.

It always spins/rotates my model around the file origin here for me.

(And so the helicopter in that case)

 

That was also the only problem in my preferred standard 3D Object Mode too.

 

So I seem to have any strange setting in VW that causes that behavior.

Maybe in Unified View or VW Pref settings, but I don't find it.

 

For Example I deactivated "Center View on activated Layer" as it always made

my geometry jump out of focus when I switch active Layer,

by jumping to file or page origin.

Edited by zoomer
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Ouch !

9_9

 

It works for you as you work in a Perspective Mode !

I always(*) work in Orthogonal Isometrics.

That is where it rotates about the file origin.

 

 

(*)

And why do I always work in Orthogonal Mode ?

- because a "perspective" Front/Left/Right/Back and even Top View is totally meaningless

- because I hate any "Cropped" perspective or camera Mode, which VW even re-activates

from time to time without being asked.

 

Sorry,

but I find that whole VW View System with its 2D/3D mixed up and arbitrarily unwanted view

changes in so many occasions so bad, tedious, irritating and just annoying.

Edited by zoomer
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