Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

I have looked through pretty much everything on this forum.  It looks like I'm out of luck on this one, so I'm basically just venting.  I just got access to a 3D printer, and wanted to generate some simple models to print.  I had used Inventor in high school doing FIRST Robotics, but not really since (now in grad school for electrical engineering).  Anyway, I have an iMac, so I boot camped it and installed the student version of Inventor.  

Unfortunately, Inventor is almost completely unusable due to the mouse scrolling speed on the Apple Magic Mouse.  I understand it's not the best mouse for this, but I am extremely annoyed I have absolutely no options to change the mouse zoom speed in Inventor.  I have tried the registry change, but 2012 at least seems to reset the Wheel Zoom Speed key to 1 everytime Inventor reboots, so I can't change it.  I have dropped the scroll speed to as low as it will go in the Control Panel, with a minimal change in zoom amount in Inventor.  

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now.  I'll probably just have to grab another mouse from my lab and use it for the time being, since Inventor is basically unusable with the magic mouse.  Many times when I try to click something, I end up zooming to the point where my model is out of frame.  For something this quick and easy, I really didn't expect to have this much trouble over a stupid mouse. 

I'm not sure if Autodesk engineers read this forum, but if they do, please add an option to change the zoom speed of the mouse scroll in Inventor!

[#2]

Speed control and sensitivity is controlled by the O/S and device drivers/software outside of Inventor, for both Windows and MAC O/S. Take a look at 3D motion controllers from 3dconnexion.com

These devices allow for 6-axis motion control, prices range from about $60.00 on up depending on the device. It allows for one hand to control the motion of the device while your other hand is on the mouse, a much better way to work in Inventor.

[#3]

I appreciate your input, but unfortunately a 3D control surface is not something I very interested in.  I will probably use Inventor a few days out of the year, and the 3D control surface would be worthless to me for 99% of my usage.  I have used Inventor with just a normal mouse for simple designs in the past, and while I know it isn't the ideal control method, it worked well enough that I didn't have any significant issues.

On the topic of zoom speed though, this should be easily fixable in Inventor if Autodesk wants to.  The OS passes the scroll wheel event to the application, but the application decides what to do with the event.  AutoCAD is able to vary the zoom sensitivity (http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2009/06/change-the-autocad-zoom-speed-with-zoomfactor.ht... and at some point at least there was a registry edit supported by Autodesk to change this attribute in Inventor  (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=11780282&linkID=9242018) although this no longer seems to be functioning in Inventor 2012.

So, it basically just seems like I will just need to borrow a different mouse when I want to use this application.  

[#4]

Instead of using the mouse scroll wheel to zoom, press and hold F3 (or mac equivalent?) and then click and drag (up or down) in the view window.  This allows for much finer control of the zoom function.  I use it when I need a more precise zoom level than I can get from the jumpiness of the wheel zoom.

[#5]

Some mouse drivers/control software, may have a "Gaming" check-box. If so, select this option, it will provide better control of the mouse as well.

[#6]

The registry hack still works just fine.. Make sure you are looking in the correct folder.. INV 2012 is registry version 16 I believe.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=11780282&linkID=9242018

[#7]

Just used the Registry hack, and it worked like a charm. 

Thanks!

Invetor 2013 registry version 17