CAD - Accessories Worth Having?

New toy arrived, and it's obvious I shall have to practice with it. Well-made and solid, it allows CAD models to be rotated, moved up down, left-right and zoomed rather like flying a plane with a joystick.

Although intuitive and precise, working the thing left-handed isn't natural to me yet, though I'm already getting there. The main problem is accidentally ordering two or more moves at the same time, such as putting a slight spin on a zoom so the close up finishes upside down! Combining movements will be very useful later when I can control them, because I'll be able to fly around models quickly.

Alan's 'compose the shot and press the shutter' description matches how I'm using it already.

Found setting-up was well thought out and easy to do, had the SpaceMouse connected and working after about ten minutes.

Dave

This "handed" thing is, I think quite funny, or perhaps I should say peculiar.

I had a colleague who was so left handed that he had to swop knife and fork over. Other colleagues & friends simply seemed to use right hand for everything. I also have a grandson who appears to be a mixture - knife and fork for example swopped over, yet other stuff being right handed. As I mentioned earlier, I swopped over my mouse with no discernible effects - actually there was one in that when my youngest son swopped his mouse buttons round, that caused me no end of confusion.

I think the earliest I became aware of this was when I was asked by the class teacher to clean the blackboard so I got hold of the board rubber(?) and set about reaching up using my left hand only to be asked a) Was I left handed?, (No miss!) followed by b) Well why are you using your left hand? (Dunno Miss, I just am!). Since then I have found myself doing certain things automatically with the left hand, perhaps not as strongly as the right hand, but still lefthanded. But the oddest thing was when I came back from hospital having just had two stents inserted via my right wrist. I was instructed to avoid using my right arm for two weeks so when "boss lady" asked me to light the coal fire, I set about it using my left hand - until I tried to use the tongs when my left hand adamantly refused to work. Eventually, I noticed that every time I tried to operate the tongs, my right hand was making all the movements - so much for don't use it! After that, my left hand worked fine. A mental thing perhaps?

So Dave, yes, you may well find it difficult initially, but should improve with time.

Cheers,

Peter G. Shaw

Edited By Peter G. Shaw on 16/06/2022 11:04:09

How is the Spacemouse going Dave ?

Very well thanks, pleased with it. Took a day or two to get used to it, then click, suddenly became natural, almost automatic. Parts can be zoomed, spun, and moved with my left hand whilst my right hand controls edits . Though not essential in the sense it does new things that can't already be done with mouse or keyboard, it speeds certain operations up considerably. Particularly useful when working on Assemblies of many parts.

Although I'm concentrating on SolidEdge at the moment, a quick play with Fusion360 suggested the SpaceMouse is even more useful on that. Might be because I'm more familiar with Fusion and am still learning Solid Edge, but my gut feel is the SpaceMouse sits with Fusion's interface a notch or two more comfortably.

So far not using the buttons as much as expected - I guessed what functions to put on them and need to think again.

Recommended with the caveat that it's usefulness is proportional to the amount of CAD being done. Not worth buying for occasional cadding about, definitely worth having for anyone CAD fluent who is even slightly busy.

Dave

Glad to hear Dave.

The only button I have programmed is to start Fusion. What would have been nice but isn't addressed by Autodesk (as far as I am aware) is the facility to have the isometric 'Home' view as a shortcut or macro. It remains only as a mouse click and can't be triggered easily by other means such as the buttons on the Spacemouse.

Alan

Speak of the devil etc

Had a mailer from 3Dconnexion this morning saying they have increased the integration with Fusion 360. Playing around with the functions now available it does seem that the 3Dconnexion ISO View 1 in the View menu creates a Home action that can be assigned to a Spacemouse button when in Design mode in Fusion. Still playing with the other functions.