Constrained orbit is not working with Spacemouse

[Anonymous]

Constrained orbit works just fine when you are using the regular mouse but Spacemouse is always in free orbit mode - regardless of the settings.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Welcome to the Fusion forum.

That is how 3Dconnexion works. The control of how you isolate motion along an axis is based on how you use it. If you twist the knob, it should spin like a top, for instance.

There is a 3Dconnexion setting called "dominant" which should help isolate the axis of movement. Is this what you are talking about? This is where the setting is, and in the image you can see how motion is isolated based on how you use the device.

Also, do you have the latest drivers?

http://www.3dconnexion.com/service/drivers.html

Please let us know if this helps.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm quite familiar with the SpaceMouse, I used it for years in work with CATIA. My problem is that I cannot fix the virtual coordinate system of my model to the axes of the SpaceMouse. More obviously, I cannot use the SpaceMouse in"object manipulation mode" only in "camera manipulation mode" - so the view position is actually defining the manipulation.

What I would like to see (and constrained orbit is doing this whit normal manipulation) is that if I'm rotating (spinning) the SpaceMouse, the model is rotating around the axis which is pointing towards the top view - independently from the view position.

I forgot to mention that I'm using a Mac.

I hope my explanation was more clear this time 🙂

Regards,

Adam

[Phil.E]

Hi,

It might help for me to explain where Fusion is at with 3Dconnexion. We are currently not officially supported, at least to my knowledge. They are happy to work with us and have made changes to their drivers to help Fusion, but there is a lot more work to be done.  What you experienced with Catia probably was the result of years of development and support. Fusion just hasn't gotten there yet.

Have you installed the latest drivers from 3Dconnexion?

I do have a couple questions for you. Can you post a picture showing how to choose "object" vs "camera" manipulation mode? I can't find the setting in my 3D connexion setup screens.

Also, when I use the view cube to set an orthographic view, like Front, and then spin the mouse I see it spinning perfectly along the "up" axis. So can you clarify what you mean by "My problem is that I cannot fix the virtual coordinate system of my model to the axes of the SpaceMouse." I must be misunderstanding what you mean by that.

Thanks for your post. I'm glad to help and hopefully we can get 3Dconnexion working the way you expect in Fusion 360.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Thanks for the quick response! Fusion 360 is an amazing SW, and I know that SpaceMouse support is just a tiny bit of the whole picture. I understand the current situation and, and I really appreciate your positive attitude to help me and make Fusion to work better with 3Dconnexion. I like the SpaceMouse because it makes my work more productive.

So, my answers are:

- I have the very latest driver package installed.

- There is no such option, I just used this terminology to explain my problem. I would like to manipulate the object, and Fusion is manipulating the camera right now -or at least it feels that way.

- You are right, if I'm selecting the Front view, and twisting the SpaceMouse the model is spinning around the up (Y) axis. BUT if I'm selecting the Top view and twisting the SM in the same way the model is spinning around the X axis now, and not around the Y. Consequently, the UP axis of the model is not constrained to the UP axis of the manipulation.

With Fusion 360 terminology: the SpaceMouse is working all the time in Free Orbit mode, and you don't have the possibility to use it with Constrained Orbit. I prefer constrained orbit, and - as I already mentioned - I like to use the SpaceMouse too so it would be nice to have both working in the same time 🙂

Regards,

Adam 

[Anonymous]

I completely agree. 

[Anonymous]

Wondering if there has been any update to this.

I am having the same frustration with Fusion 360 and my space navigator 3D Connexion Mouse.

Usually, say, in Sketchup, there is an option in the menu to change the mode from camera target mode to helicopter mode to object mode etc.

As it is, there does not seem to be this integration in the current drivers with fusion 360 to enable these modes.

[TheCADWhisperer]

Can you create a Screencast Recording of the behavior that you are experiencing. 

[lastbrain]

The problem with Fusion360 is that it uses Space Navigator in a strange manner. In other 3D design softwares (Rhino3D, 3DS Max, Blender for example) when I rotate SpaceNavigator around vertical axis, the Z (vertical) axis of the world coordinate system remains always vertical, in Fusion360 it tilts abnormally. This behaviour make the navigation a nightmare, especially with models that has a ground plane, like buildings.

SpaceNavigator should match mouse navigation mode: Constrained orbit or Free orbit. 

Now it is always in Free orbit mode, regardless which mode is selected.

[ErwinMeulman]

Constrained orbit Spacemouse same problem, Z-axis in vertical direction can't be locked. 

[g-andresen]

Hi, 

1. click the Home Button in the right upper corner

2. disconnect and connect

3. reset all preferences

4. check for update  (10.6)

günther

[Anonymous]

I don't know who is responsible, either Fusion 360 has updated to become more compatible with my Spacemouse navigator, or 3DConnexion has updated their drivers.

Constrained orbit and other functions work well now and I love the spacemouse with F360!

[mattila.valtteri]

Is it working for anyone else? Not for me.

I'm on all latest MacOS, Fusion 360 and 3DxWare driver, Spacemouse wireless.

If it's working for someone, and the fact that only a relatively small group of people here actually complain about the stupid behavior of the mouse got me thinking that maybe it should work...

Should one try re-installing Fusion? I'd like to see a bit more participation from Autodesk in these conversations. It's been almost (or at least) three years since people started asking this question. It's a fair amount of time to tackle a specific technical issue for a huge corporation. Just sayin'...

[Phil.E]

Reading over the posts here, it looks like this is not wide spread, and some people are reporting it fixed. The question then is why is it happening for you?

Have you tried restarting your computer?

To answer your question about a "specific technical" problem: If customers are reporting successful use of 3Dconnexion in August, and nobody except you is complaining, development teams are going to instead focus on things like crashes that affect hundreds or thousands of customers, or new features that are for every Fusion customer. I'm sorry this is affecting you, (and perhaps others who haven't chimed in), but it just doesn't rise to emergency bug fixing priority based on this one forum post.

If anyone else is still facing this issue, please leave a note here on this thread so we can see how impactful this is for everyone.

[C.Nicks]

I have found that now it sometimes works, but other times it doesn't.
Usually it starts working again after selecting constrained orbit, then orbiting using the regular mouse. After that the 3D mouse starts to orbit the same.

One question though, why does free orbit tilt and roll when only moving one axis?
It has been absolutely driving me crazy and I can't figure out why anyone would want it this way. I've used plenty of other softwares and none of them have this kind of problem. See my gif below. That is me rotating the 3d mouse with only one axis enabled. Why does the view roll and tilt?

https://recordit.co/qJwgGUkhUK

[Phil.E]

First, be sure you have the latest 3dConnexion drivers. They released some recently.

Also, just be aware that the behavior of space mouse in Fusion is not entirely due to Fusion development. 3DConnexion supports Fusion now. In fact, we do nothing in Fusion development to change the way it works in Fusion other than ensuring the UI layer is accepting input from it. Read this thread. The situation totally changed over a period of years, from being unsupported to users being happy with isolated axis navigation. In this time all improvements were made on the 3DConnexion driver side, by them. They do have user forums and are responsive, AFAIK.

I'll test out the behavior, because it seems that Fusion is losing focus on constrained orbit. That would be a Fusion problem and we should treat it as a bug, so I'll try to reproduce it for a bug report.

[kb9ydn]

---

@C.Nicks wrote:

One question though, why does free orbit tilt and roll when only moving one axis?
It has been absolutely driving me crazy and I can't figure out why anyone would want it this way. I've used plenty of other softwares and none of them have this kind of problem. See my gif below. That is me rotating the 3d mouse with only one axis enabled. Why does the view roll and tilt?

https://recordit.co/qJwgGUkhUK

---

That's fairly normal and happens in Solidworks as well.  This is because when you twist the knob you are also tilting it to the side a little bit.  It's actually fairly difficult to not tilt it some while while twisting.

One thing you can try is to turn on the "Dominant" flag.  Open the 3DConnexion control panel and go to advanced settings.  Under navigation, check the box for "Dominant".  What this does is to only allow one type of movement at a time.  So it will only allow rotation around one axis at a time, that is whichever one has the strongest input.

C|

[Phil.E]

After some checking:

1. Constrained or free orbit does not affect spacemouse. This is because spacemouse does not detect Fusion settings and then modify how spacemouse orbits to "match" that.

2. Constrained axis is a setting in 3Dconnexion drivers. I could not find this on the mac version.

If you can't get that to work to your satisfaction, have you tried any of the other navigation tools in Fusion?

• Named views.
• View cube.
• Orbit (using only 1 axis)

[c_nicks]

Yes, I already had the dominant setting enabled. For my gif video showing the roll I completely disabled all the other axis. This is how Fusion interprets free orbit even if there is no other axis input. It happens with the mouse as well.

So the constrained orbit has been working with my spacemouse, but only after first starting an orbit after the change with the regular mouse. I don't think the spacemouse drivers have anyuthing to do with the orbit mode and instead are essentially feeding mouse style input to Fusion.

My main problem is the way Fusion handles orbits. I would love for there to be a hybrid constrained/free. Constrained works great for looking at things with the ground plane down, but it cannot be controlled when looking down. Constrained orbit should instead take into account the direction the camera is facing when starting an orbit.
Either that or a dominant filter should be added to the free orbit and whatever roll bug is in there gets fixed. So far I have to do little circles to fix the tilt when using the mouse and it gets really annoying.

As for the other views, they could be useful if they were able to be keyboard shortcut mapped. What a lacking feature.

[Anonymous]

Win10 64Bit

Fusion360: Version  2.0.8624

SpaceMouse Compact: Driver 3DxWare 10.6.9.3230  3DxWinCore 17.6.9.17612

I am horrified how simple, intuitive manipulation is just not possible with the current versions of the driver and Fusion 360 settings.

I think what most people want (including people on this thread) is to manipulate the model with the SpaceMouse in the same way clicking and dragging the top-right ViewCube works (with Constrained orbit enabled), whilst replacing the laborious mouse wheel zoom with one axis (of the users choice) of the SpaceMouse. The cherry on top would be to auto-disable all rotation axes upon entering Sketch mode, enabling the SpaceMouse to zoom and pan the sketch without tilt ruining the plane view.

I don't want to be fighting to correct which way is 'up' the whole time I'm rotating the model. I also can't believe there is no way to assign the 'Go To Home View' button to the SpaceMouse side buttons...

For me, Preferences>Default Orbit Type>Constrained Orbit is totally ignored when rotating the model with the SpaceMouse. Rotate one left/right TILT axis with the SpaceMouse and the view is tilted (like tilting your head to one side) not just orbited around the model as one would expect. It is has lost which way is 'up' just by trying to rotate the model (like on a turn table). You can easily isolate this issue by switching off everything but the left/right TILT axis on the SpaceMouse settings, and swapping between mouse drag ViewCube mode (where Constrained Orbit snaps on) and SpaceMouse mode (where constrained orbit snaps to off).

This simple solution unfortunately requires work from the Fusion 360 team and 3D Connexion.