3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Horizon Lock Constrain Orbit Missing Feature Video

[Anonymous]

This post is a final act of desperation.

In the video at the bottom of this post I describe how broken the current SpaceMouse implemetation is, and how great the device could be if these, and other problems, were resolved.

I fear it will never be fixed due to these direct quotes...

'The navigation with the SpaceMouse in Fusion 360 was implemented and is maintained by Autodesk directly.' -3Dconnexion

'Those options are controlled by the spacemouse drivers that 3Dconnexion has crafted for their support of Fusion 360.' - Autodesk

If anyone can help me work out HOW the driver and Fusion 360 communicate, please help me out. Does Fusion use the 3Dconnexion SDK to just read the axis values and control the camera transform internally to Fusion 360, OR does 3Dconnexion  remotely control the camera transform from within the driver software somehow. I assume the support is not add-in or script based. If both companies deny all responsibility for maintaining the SpaceMouse functionality, then me posting this fix and offering my code for free is all in vain. Thanks for watching!

SOUND REQUIRED:

And yes... I did actually program my own faux Fusion 360 just to show how things could, and should, be... 😂

[Anonymous]

Thx for doing this btw. 

It would be cool, when the sdk works finally, that fusion gets a pref option that would disable certain movements in sketch mode to prevent loosing your perspective. Iam pretty sure that the sdk doesnt provide such option so you would need to program this in 🙂 

[helloK4FK2]

Thanks Phil, I appreciate the effort and hope our space mouse will be more than an expensive paperweight soon.

[Phil.E]

@helloK4FK2  I hope so too.

I'm really stunned by the comments here. I had no idea that constrained orbit was the top reason for using a space mouse. In the thousands of hours I've spent modeling products (outside of my current job) using a space mouse I've never once had the pleasure of using it that way, but I never considered it a paperweight. I can't wait to find out what it is like to use it that way. Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

[seth.madore]

Chiming in as a user and customer (please ignore the autodesk badging for the moment) I was never aware of this function in any other software I've used. I too never considered the 3d Mouse as a paperweight, but an awesome tool for zoom, pan, rotate

[Anonymous]

The spacemouse is indeed no paperweight but why cripple the usability when you can just do so much more with it when you dont have to think about the z axis anymore. I mean a experienced user that never had any idea that this existed, which is certainly not a surprise since the only CAD/poly app that supports the 3dcon. SDK is sketchup to my knowledge, would prob not miss it or bother at all. Autodesk or creo/catia/spaceclaim and other big guys never bothered to give users the option to take this feature into use. Instead they all implemented the barebone function to use it for "zoom, pan, rotate" 🙂
But what happens when you pan without a locked z (horizon), exactly you roll and loose your view. Again a experienced user would be able to mitigate it by having the muscle memory down to almost prevent it...

Blender is free...download it and enable "lock horizon". See if it makes a difference to you 🙂
They have all the option inside the NDOF setting inside blender tho, so dont search for them inside the driver

[carlinohefner]

I couldn't agree more, it's a very useful tool if you take the time to build muscle memory for it, but for those who prefer constained orbit on mouse, adding the same feature to spacemouse makes for a much more seamless and comfortable experience.

Ignoring the spacemouse for a second, the same concept of free/vs/constrained applies to normal mouse use, I've seen veteran users of different CAD programs use free orbit with their mouse simply because they didn't know constrained orbit was even a concept, let alone an option. I've watched them do "the wiggle" to rotate object back upright after moving around the object, and they don't think twice about it because they've grown used to it. But if you've ever used constrained orbit with a normal mouse then you KNOW how much nicer it is to always let up be up.

Now the same concept applies to spacemouse. It's a great tool, but for those who are used to constrained orbit find it difficult to use the spacemouse when they constantly have to worry about keeping up pointed up. Enabling constrained orbit for spacemouse is user preference feature, some may not like it at all, but I can assure all of the constrained orbit mouse users will love it.

And I can take it one step further to show how the same concept applies to real life: in the real world when we move around an object to get a better look, we don't orbit along the plane of our vision, we orbit along the ground, with gravity to keep our perspective. If we free-orbited along the plane of our vision, we'd have to constantly perform a counter-rotation to keep the horizon level, but we don't. Constrained orbit is how we move in the real world, thus I'm looking forward to see it added to spacemouse.

[Fritzache]

Hello guys. I write again here with the hope that the process of adding the constrain orbit feature is gonna be speed up by our feedback. 
i was playing Friday with the SM (spacemouse) inside fusion (I rarely use it because of the missing horizon lock) and I noticed that all the movements done with SM are relative to the camera view and not to the working space. 

ps. I will celebrate the day when horizon lock is going to be an option

[Fritzache]

The sopacemouse entreprise has a button to disable all rotations and keep pan and zoom. 

[Anonymous]

Yeah that works for sketch mode but its tedious and a native solution should be implemented imho

@carlinohefner thx alot for writing that. I wanted to write something similar but wasnt able to because Iam not a native speaker 🙂

[Anonymous]

I suppose you are using the wrong lingo. A Phase is a factor in time with newpage. So your query is the way to have one point in time no longer have interaction with another factor in time?

[sebB6TUV]

Any news on this? It's been nearly a year. Are we any closer to a solution. Is Autodesk still working actively with 3Dconnexion to resolve this issue?

Whilst this may not be a big issue for a seasoned CAD user who is unaware that horizon lock even exists, there are many new users who start with Fusion 360 and have never known navigation without horizon lock when using a standard mouse.

Is it possible to give us a rough timeline as to when this might be resolved?

[Phil.E]

Thanks for asking.

To be brief, yes and I cannot discuss dates with regard to software features.

[adzignQR5DL]

After getting used to the Space mouse in Lychee slicer coming to Fusion 360 the movement seems non-sensical. 

I really hope this gets fixed soon.

[Anonymous]

Fixed tilting in rotation on my Mac OS Big Sur (beta drivers)

I suggested that something is wrong not in drivers itself, but in how space mouse communocate with F360.
So solution for me was very simple - i just trying to play with setting and set navigation shortcuts to Inventor style and also removed camera pivoting.
I know that it looks isn't related, but it works for me very well.

 (i guess disabling "camera pivot" is not neccesary)

[Anonymous]

Have you solved the locked horizon issue? 

[Phil.E]

Lock Horizon can be enabled for windows users by turning on the preview preference.

Next you'll need to update your 3Dconnexion drivers to the latest, and also adjust your 3Dconnexion settings:

Because this is in preview, it means we're still working on it.

There is one limitation you might find, and that is you cannot set a new "horizon" for an existing file. Example: If you have a Y up model and try to change the view cube such that Z up is "top" (this would change the horizon plane) the original horizon is still in effect. We're working on this.

Please do let us know how you like it! 🙂

Thanks,

[adzignQR5DL]

Awesome! Thanks for the update. Its working well in the quick test I did.

[Anonymous]

Thank you

[Fritzache]

this is great news! I will go in the weekend at work to test it!

i’m so so so so so so so so happy!

my space Moise was gathering dust. 

[stephen_mcmillan]

Awesome. This works 99% perfectly.

the core function of constrained orbit with the spacemouse works great, and it obeys the state of the "Free Orbit / Constrained Orbit" selector switch at the bottom of the screen, which is perfect.

There's a small glitch when using the "orbit selector switch". When I select the small down arrow, then pick a "mode", the cursor shows the free orbit symbol, and you have to hit "Esc" to return to normal use. 

Instead, the button should behave as a toggle, not requiring the use of the drop down at all. It's only two modes, so clicking the icon directly should just instantly toggle between the two modes.

But otherwise very usable and a huge quality of life improvement.

Bravo.