Space Navigator Setup
3d motion controllers ( or Spaceballs--> www.3dconnexion.com ) have long been popular in mechanical and industrial design. Recently these devices have become much less expensive, if you work in 3d this can be a very handy tool for viewing your models.
The $60 personal model works just fine, and includes 2 programmable buttons. It's key to be able to set the rotation center on the fly. Currently, the controller will only rotate when you are in a View Mode other than 2d Wireframe. Here are instructions to slave these important functions to the 2 buttons available on the Space Navigator.
Overview
- Start with AutoCAD open, so that you are editing the correct Navigator profile/mode.
- Double click the Space Navigator icon in the task bar to bring up 3dConnexion Control Panel
- Create a new custom command sequence to set the pivot point.
- Slave the new command to one of the buttons.
- Repeat steps for View Mode control.
Here is a SS of the driver icon. You can also get to the 3d Connexion Control Panel through the Windows Control Panel where it's called "3DxWare Panel".
Here is the first tab of the 3DxWare Control Panel. Make sure you are editing the configuration for AutoCAD--the controller stores setting separately for different programs. If you edit the "Any Application" profile your settings will not be available in AutoCAD. The zoom direction is an important setting, but also personal preference. The up/down as zoom is most intuitive to me.
On the "Button Configuration" tab, click the "Custom Functions" button at the bottom to bring up the dialog box shown below.
In the "Custom Functions" dialog, click "New" to create a new macro; the resulting dialog is shown below.
In the "User Macro Editor" give your new command an appropriate name. Click once in the "User Macro" window to start recording your macro. Be careful, as this is a keystroke recorder -- hitting backspace on your keyboard will not back up a character, but record a 'backspace' keystroke. To delete your last keystroke or clear the entire entry use the buttons below.
The settings for activating 3dWireframe are shown here. To see the aliases for other Visual Styles, type "vscurrent" at the command line in AutoCAD.
Here I've recorded 3 macros, 2 for setting the Visual Style and one for picking rotation center.
Now that you have custom macros, they will appear at the bottom of the list for each button.
These steps also apply to the other 3dConnexion products, the Space Pilot offers over a dozen programmable buttons.
