The people I work for gave me a new computer with Windows 7 64-bit on it. However, they put 32-bit versions of AutoCAD 2004 and 2007 on it. It doesn't seem to be possible to use a Wintab 1.1 tablet in Win 7 64-bit with any 32-bit versions of AutoCAD. This is a real productivity killer for me, since I have been using a tablet with a 16-button puck in AutoCAD for years. My tablet configuration not only uses all sixteen buttons for commands and snaps, but also another fourteen buttons with the SHIFT key and another fourteen buttons with the CTRL key. It sounds like a lot to learn, but I had them all down in a couple of months, and I've been using them so long they're practically second-nature to me.
I looked around and found that there are a couple of manufacturers who make mice with lots and lots of buttons. Hard-core computer gamers use them for MMOGs ("massively multiplayer online games") such as World of Warcraft. The one I ended up getting is the Razer Naga Molten Edition. You should see this thing, it's great! It's got a red backlight behind the logo that pulses on and off. A more subtle feature, but one I like a lot, is a very comfortable molded finger-rest for your ring finger. From the AutoCAD user's point of view, the real eye-catcher is on the left side of the mouse, a 12-button number pad which you operate with your thumb. There are also two more thumb-buttons toward the front (that is, the side the wire comes out of), the standard right and left click buttons, and a click-and-scroll wheel.
If you look at ACAD.MNU or at the "Mouse Buttons" section in the CUI dialog box, you'll see that in theory you could assign various commands to mouse buttons 3, 4, 5 and so on at least up to 10. Unfortunately the Naga doesn't work that way. When you click one of the number pad buttons, the operating system does not interpret this as a high-numbered mouse button, but as either a keyboard click on a number key or a on a key in the numeric key pad (there's a switch on the bottom of the mouse which chooses this). So, just using the mouse without configuring Razer's mouse driver, when you click the "6" button on the side of the mouse, it's the same as pressing the "6" key on your keyboard.
But when you download the latest mouse driver from Razer's web site and install their fancy mouse driver, you get the option to assign keyboard and/or mouse actions to all the buttons on the Naga. So I came up with a scheme that allows me to assign a total of 38 commands to the buttons on the Naga, in combination with no key, or the SHIFT key, or the ALT key. First, I created a profile in the Naga driver and added a bunch of macros.
Here's how to do that. One of the macros I created is called "button_03," and consists of the key combination "CTRL" + "3". In the "Manage Macros" tab you click the "New" button, and a box pops up where you type in the name of the proposed new macro. Now click the "start recording macro events" button (the one with the bright green circle). Press the "CTRL" button and hold it down, press and release the "3" button on the keyboard (that is, _not_ on the numeric key pad), and then release the "CTRL" button. Now cllck the "end recording macro events" button (the one with the white square). You'll see the keyboard actions in the window: the first line is a down-arrow and "Ctrl," the second line shows something like "0.499 seconds delay," the third line shows a down-arrow and "3," then the next is "0.093 seconds delay," then an up-arrow and "3" signifying the release of the "3" key, then another delay such as "0.369 seconds delay," and finally an up-arrow and "Ctrl". You can right-click on any of the lines in the window and delete or edit it; I edited all the delays so they would only take 20 ms.
I created macros for "Ctrl" + "n" where n is a number between 3 and 9, or the "UP", "DOWN", "LEFT", "RIGHT", "END", "HOME", and "INSERT" keys. The next step is to assign these macros to the thumb grid and to buttons 4 and 5 on the mouse, which you do in the "Assign Buttons" tab in the Naga driver interface. So once you have done this, if you press the "5" button on the mouse's number pad it is as though you have pressed "CTRL" + "5", and so on.
So now you can go into the CUI command in AutoCAD, and go to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" section. This is where you assign various functions and snaps to key combinations. AutoCAD already uses "CTRL" + "0", "CTRL" + "1", and "CTRL" + "2" for pre-defined keyboard shortcuts, which is why I didn't make a mouse macro for these key combinations. In the upper-left part of the CUI dialog box, click the little "+" to the left of "Keyboard Shortcuts" so it shows "Shortcut Keys" and "Temporary Override Keys". Now in the lower-left of that dialog box is the "Command List" with a great big long list of commands in it. Let's say you want to assign the "line" command to the key combination "CTRL" + "3". Scroll down until you see "Line" in the list. I see three commands named "Line" in the Command List. Click on any one and you'll see the menu commands associated with that command in the "Information" box at the lower right. Here's one that shows the macro
^c^c_line
OK, now click on that line in the Command List and while hoding the mouse button down, drag and drop it on "Shortcut Keys" under "Keyboard Shortcuts" Now you see a new copy of it below "Shortcut Keys." When you click on this, you'll see its properties in the "Properties" box in the lower right of the CUI dialog box. Now click the right side of the white space labeled "Keys" under "Access" and you'll see a button with an ellipsis ("...") appear. Click this button and a box pops up asking you to "Press New Shortcut Key." Now press the "CTRL" and "3" keys and you'll see "CTRL + 3" in the box, so click the "OK" button. What's kind of nice is that AutoCAD also allows you to assign a different keyboard shortcut to "CTRL" + "SHIFT" + "3", and yet another keyboard macro to "CTRL" + "ALT" + "3". So if you have made a keyboard macro for the "3" button on your mouse which delivers the equivalent of "CTRL" + "3", when you hold down the "SHIFT" key on your keyboard and click the "3" button on the mouse it will send "CTRL" + "SHIFT" + "3" to AutoCAD.
Thus with a relatively small amount of effort I assigned a total of 36 commands to the number pad on the side of the mouse. I also assigned the menu command ";" (this is the equivalent of pressing the "ENTER" key) to the front/side button (the Naga software calls this mouse button #5) and the menu command "^c^c^c" (the equivalent of pressing the "ESCAPE" key three times in a row, to cancel out of nested commands) to the rear/side button (mouse button #4). I'm not nearly as fast as I used to be with my Summasketch's 16-button puck, but I'm already getting the hang of it in just a couple of days; it won't be long until I won't have to look at the mouse to do what I want. Plus, unlike the tablet, this mouse has a scroll wheel which gives me extra-quick zooms and pans, which I like a lot. So if you're an old digitizer user who misses all the buttons you used to have, you might want to give this fancy button-covered mouse a try.
