In a past career, I was a mechanical design engineer; I’ve probably spent 10,000 hours of my life in SolidWorks. Not once did I feel like a 3d mouse would speed me up or otherwise solve my problems. I trialed a spacepilot for several months and just couldn’t be arsed after awhile. What do others get out of them?
For some people it simply does not help with the workflow. For me it is a significant upgrade as it allows me to never use the normal mouse to move around in 3D, and allows me to quickly move the view to where I want it to be. Without it, moving in 3D just feels clunky to me.
I don’t have as many hours in SolidWorks but for me, trying to navigate without a 3d mouse feels like riding a bike with square tires. I could manage to do it but why. At the end of the day though it’s a preference. Likewise I have to murder the x and y axis on it for things to click in my head, which is another preference. I suppose growing up as a gamer may have something to do with that. I don’t want to move/rotate the object, I want to move/rotate the camera…
Does it support 3D mice?
yes
You can even run some of them under linux with this driver: https://github.com/FreeSpacenav/spacenavd
Awesome!!
In a past career, I was a mechanical design engineer; I’ve probably spent 10,000 hours of my life in SolidWorks. Not once did I feel like a 3d mouse would speed me up or otherwise solve my problems. I trialed a spacepilot for several months and just couldn’t be arsed after awhile. What do others get out of them?
For some people it simply does not help with the workflow. For me it is a significant upgrade as it allows me to never use the normal mouse to move around in 3D, and allows me to quickly move the view to where I want it to be. Without it, moving in 3D just feels clunky to me.
But as I said, it is a preference.
I don’t have as many hours in SolidWorks but for me, trying to navigate without a 3d mouse feels like riding a bike with square tires. I could manage to do it but why. At the end of the day though it’s a preference. Likewise I have to murder the x and y axis on it for things to click in my head, which is another preference. I suppose growing up as a gamer may have something to do with that. I don’t want to move/rotate the object, I want to move/rotate the camera…