Best mouse for Fusion 360 on MacBook
@jonpendleton57 it's going to be largely a matter of personal preference. However, to be fully transparent, I can tell you that the Apple Magic Mouse does not currently play nicely with Fusion 360 without first disabling Gesture-based View Navigation in Fusion's Preferences.
You're going to want at least mouse buttons 1-3, but 4/5 (typically on the side) are not currently utilized. With "CAD mice" they often separate the scroll wheel and middle mouse button (3), where most mice on the market tend to utilize a clickable scroll wheel to do the same - the benefit of separating them can be that you can hold down button 3 without risking accidentally changing zoom level.
The SpaceMouse device mentioned by the other user is generally used in addition to a mouse - it's a way of utilizing your [generally speaking] left hand to control pan/orbit navigation, freeing up the right hand to freely navigate the UI without needing to jump back to the modeling canvas.
On macOS, we also support trackpad gestures for navigation, and some Mac users opt for that over a traditional mouse.
Whether trackpad, SpaceMouse, or traditional 3-5 button mouse, you cannot go wrong - it's all about what feels natural to you.
Lance Carocci
Fusion QA for UI Framework/Cloud Workflows, and fervent cat enthusiast
I don't think that the actual question has been answered.
I think that the one mouse NOT to use for 3D modeling in general and CAD specifically is the Magic Mouse, the one mouse Apple manufactures. The lack of a distinct scroll-click wheel makes working with the magic mouse very cumbersome in my experience.
Any other mouse with 2 buttons and a scroll-click wheel should work fine.
I personally like small mice and used Razer Orochi. I have 2 of them and both have dysfunctional middle mouse button by now, or in other words the scroll wheel still works, but it does not function as a middle button anymore.
As such I migrated to a 3D connexion CAD mouse compact wireless, which has three distinct buttons and a mouse wheel.
That covers the right hand operation of a (mostly) right handed person.
My left hand usually operates a 3D connexion Spacemouse wireless.
I was thinking that maybe the trackball would help cut down mouse moments and save space. Do you have any experience using a trackball mouse?
Not as much as I'd like to. The Mac trackpad (whether in-built or Magic Trackpad) serves a lot of the same purpose for me since you need to use two fingers to trigger most movement gestures and the trackpad itself stays stationary - but a trackball is next on my list of purchases just so I can better answer these types of questions. I had a coworker in a past life who swore by her trackball for content editing, but again, it's about what feels natural to you. If you can, I would purchase one at a retailer with a friendly return policy so that you can exchange it if you dislike it.
Or, if you want to go over-the-top like I do, you could have multiple input devices connected to the same device, and switch based on your current application/context. Even though you can only have one cursor active, you can still connect multiple mice!
Lance Carocci
Fusion QA for UI Framework/Cloud Workflows, and fervent cat enthusiast
