Hello all

I am just a hobby user of MOI but I love it and have been hooked since early in the beta. I have always been interested in the spacemouse line of products but price-wise there was no point in spending that kind of money for something that could end up as another expensive paper-weight. I noticed a thread or two here regarding support for it in MOI so I checked it out again. 3Dconnexion www.3dconnexion.com has now come out with a much less expensive model called the spacenavigatorPE it retails for $59 for the personal edition(no commercial use) and can be upgraded to a commercial license for $99, I believe the upgrade has to do with support. How this is enforced I have no idea, but thats not my point. I have had mine for about a week now and it has a fairly steep learning curve, but I am getting the hang of it. I can see already how useful this would be to some of you who use MOI for design purposes. After a while it starts to become intuitive where you don't have to think about controlling it. I got one for $51 on ebay its heavy, solid and easy to setup.
IMO it makes MOI even more user friendly if thats possible :)

Disclaimer: I in no way am connected with the 3D Connexion Corporation or any of its subsidiaries. This message is brought to you as a simple public service announcement.


Matt

So it works with MOI out of the box?

You can get it from www.buy.com for $39.99 with free shipping. With Google check out, you can get it for $29.99. I have been thinking about getting it. Could you go into more detail on how you use it in your workflow?

I did get mine from Buy.com, but through ebay. As far as work flow, at least for me it replaces the need to manipulate the view controls with the mouse. There are a number of ways to set it up based mostly on your preference. I haven't touched the the view keys since. There are two buttons on the device, I have one set up to goto 3D window mode and the other is set as the "reset view" command. I'm still learning the device(as well as MOI) in ortho views its very straight forward to use, panning and zooming. In the 3D view it can rotate, tilt, pan and zoom. It looks very simple
but it has a lot more functionality than is apparent. You can push or pull for straight up or down to zoom, twist the top to rotate and use it like a joystick to pan and tumble. You can also edit the axis to have them do whatever you prefer.
The device can recognize the difference between tilting forward(or any direction) and sliding forward. In other words if you were to push forward as diving an aircraft the view will pitch forward, if you keep the top flat and "slide" it forward it will pan in that direction, kind of tricky to get used to and now that I try also difficult to describe. I think the biggest thing for me as I get more familiar with it, is the ability to do multiple movements at the same time.
Yes it works flawlessly with MOI right out of the box, now if I could only model something besides cubes I'd be all set :)

The 3D Connexion site explains the axis way better than I am capable.
IMO if you can get one for $30, buy two!
I hope this was helpful

Matt

Thanks for the reply. By the time that I thought about it and was ready to pull the tripper today, the price went back up. Being that it is non-necessary and I just popped for MOI, I better wait until I spend more money.