Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

2D pan+zoom support for SpaceNavigator [ADDED in AC17!]

Anonymous
Not applicable
3D support in ArchiCAD is great for the 3D view window. But in the 2D window, where I'd spend most of my time, the spaceNav doesn't work AT ALL! You'd think it would allow panning and zoom functions, but no, nothing. Believe it or not, adding this function alone would be more productive for me overall than using sNav in the 3D window.

For those not aware of the 3D mouse, check it out at www.3dconnexion.com
25 REPLIES 25
Anonymous
Not applicable
Bump on this one. How come they haven't implemented this yet? I've used solidworks for some years now and cannot live without my SpaceNavigator. Please do implement this ASAP.

I was actually really disappointed to see that it's not useable in 2D mode, and only in 3D, even in 3D its not as good as solidworks. Because in solidworks the "centerpoint of rotation" is changed to the current screen location when the axis' are not in use. And i really miss this feature as well.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Is anyone even looking in these forums?
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Sigma wrote:
Is anyone even looking in these forums?
Thousands of people. Apparently not many folks are interested in this wish - which is limited to those people who have a SpaceNavigator.

Dwight was the first person here to get a SN when they first came out. His reports convinced me to get one. I hate working in 3D without one - but even though I've demonstrated it for many clients, and the cost is reasonably low - I don't know of any of them who have bought one. I bought one as a gift for one of them, and am not sure he even uses it.

I agree that 2D pan/zoom would be nice to have as an option. I generally don't need it - as one hand is on the keyboard and the other on the mouse when in 2D ... but there are all kinds of times when it would be really helpful: measuring with the measure tool, dimensioning, eye-droppering from one place to another... all kinds of things where middle-button dragging or dragging the Preview zoom-box is not as fast as the SN would be...

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
I have not had the opportunity to use my Space Navigator mouse in other software, and therefore am not aware on what functionality we are missing out on!
If there is more that can be done - I'd agree! 😉
I saw they are prepping addons for google earth etc but as they are beta I don't want to put on my production PC at work...
Anonymous
Not applicable
Now that our wish has come true, the space navigator is working in 2D, I'm having 2 problems:

1.The up-down axes are reversed from right-left. To pan to the left you push to the left. But to pan up, you push down. Changing the setting in 3D connexxion preference seems to have no affect on this.

2. the navigator is sensitive to small vibrations. Sometimes small shaking of the keyboard tray makes the 2d drawing move around, and causes latency in AC.

Since it is not useful in 2D, because of the messed up axes thing, I wish there was a way to disable it.

Anyone else having these issues?
Marton Kiss
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
svenl wrote:
1.The up-down axes are reversed from right-left. To pan to the left you push to the left. But to pan up, you push down. Changing the setting in 3D connexxion preference seems to have no affect on this.
Since the new function is out there we've had many request about the ability to change the up and down directs. It looks like there are two different schools of navigation, like we had back in gaming with reverse y axis and like the natural scrolling of OS X. With ArchiCAD 18 we will try to give control in your hands, to change such settings according to your taste.
svenl wrote:
2. the navigator is sensitive to small vibrations. Sometimes small shaking of the keyboard tray makes the 2d drawing move around, and causes latency in AC.
Mine does not result any accidental movements, though I have it on my desk next to the keyboard - I don't have a keyboard tray. I am curious if this is an issue with your particular model only. Anyone else with the same experience?
Marton Kiss
VP, Product Success
GRAPHISOFT
Anonymous
Not applicable
Marton wrote:
svenl wrote:
1.The up-down axes are reversed from right-left. To pan to the left you push to the left. But to pan up, you push down. Changing the setting in 3D connexxion preference seems to have no affect on this.
Since the new function is out there we've had many request about the ability to change the up and down directs. It looks like there are two different schools of navigation, like we had back in gaming with reverse y axis and like the natural scrolling of OS X. With ArchiCAD 18 we will try to give control in your hands, to change such settings according to your taste.
svenl wrote:
2. the navigator is sensitive to small vibrations. Sometimes small shaking of the keyboard tray makes the 2d drawing move around, and causes latency in AC.
Mine does not result any accidental movements, though I have it on my desk next to the keyboard - I don't have a keyboard tray. I am curious if this is an issue with your particular model only. Anyone else with the same experience?
I have mine on a heavy duty drawer style keyboard tray. The main problem occurs when keying into the numeric pallets to manually enter distances. As you type, the slight jiggles causes it to reject the entry.
Marton Kiss
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
svenl wrote:
I have mine on a heavy duty drawer style keyboard tray. The main problem occurs when keying into the numeric pallets to manually enter distances. As you type, the slight jiggles causes it to reject the entry.
Thanks, I will check with the dev folks to see what we can do to avoid this.

Marton
Marton Kiss
VP, Product Success
GRAPHISOFT
Anonymous
Not applicable
This was really driving me crazy, but I figured it out! Just go to the 'axes' tab in the 3dconnexion preferences pane, and (with the archicad application selected) bump up the threshold slider to a higher level for each individual axes. For me, the first notch was more than enough to reduce the initial sensitivity to a level where it doesn't make things jumpy.
Marton Kiss
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
svenl wrote:
This was really driving me crazy, but I figured it out! Just go to the 'axes' tab in the 3dconnexion preferences pane, and (with the archicad application selected) bump up the threshold slider to a higher level for each individual axes. For me, the first notch was more than enough to reduce the initial sensitivity to a level where it doesn't make things jumpy.
Thanks for posting the solution. I was searching for a similar sensitivity or treshold setting, but had an older driver. There are plenty of new options with the new. Nice job 3DConnexion team.

Marton
Marton Kiss
VP, Product Success
GRAPHISOFT