Space mousse 3D on Mac

[PhilBali]

Hello all! I hope I am posting in the right section here.

I was trying to find an affordable solution for my 3D design which works on both Mac an PC and after a few months using Sketchup, I ended up to find FreeCAD which seems a way more appropriate for our designs.
I downloaded the very last version which is the 0.15 for Mac. I guess there is not so many mac user's here and according to what I read on the forum, not so many people care about the fruit company that much, which, I believe is sad. But anyway.. I guess I have to deal with that. I should be very grateful to at least have something working nicely and professional on Mac because except Sketchup, there is nothing much affordable for ac user's.
I am running the last version of OS X 10.11.4.
I have a 3D Connexion Space mousse. This mousse works great with Sketchup but it seems it is not supported by FreeCAD. I cannot use it so far.
Is anyone having this experience and is there a way to make it work? Because it is a very great tool to design in 3D and I would very pleased if someone could ever help me out on this topic.

Thank you by advance for your future reply.

[r-frank]

Hello Phil.

Welcome to FreeCAD and the forum.

Your version (0.15) is outdated and did not support (at least as far as i know) spacemouse.

Please go to the FreeCAD files page and download at least the 0.16 stable release (scroll down for "latest release".
You might even have a try with the latest development snapshot for mac 0.17.7405 (on the same page).

As you stated, at the moment there seem to be not so much users for FreeCAD on mac, so feedback for that platform is welcomed ...

Roland

[PhilBali]

Hello roland,

thank you for your reply. You were very right, the 0.15 was not the latest release as I thought. I download the 0.16 and the space mousse is supported, I am so happy!!!
Thank you very much.
I did not try the 0.17 yet but for now I will stick with the stable version and i will give regular feedback on what i will find out.

[PhilBali]

It seems up and down are inverted with zoom in and zoom out
Is there a way where I can assign custom settings on freeCAD to the moves of the space mousse?

[NormandC]

Hello Phil,

Welcome here.

I guess there is not so many mac user's here and according to what I read on the forum, not so many people care about the fruit company that much

FreeCAD is now very well supported on OS X, it was not the case a few years ago.

I'm one of those don't care much about the fruit company, nor do I care much about the "openings covered by panes of glass" company. (I did own a fruit computer ages ago!)

You may see a few of my crowd here for one reason: FreeCAD is open source, therefore it tends to attract people who believe in open source and who don't trust big commercial models. We started using open source software on proprietary operating systems, and at some point we made a switch to a full open source desktop. It's a philosophical stance. But don't let that stop you from joining us here, just consider it as ambient noise.

I did not try the 0.17 yet but for now I will stick with the stable version

The 0.17 development cycle just started, and it already brings quite disruptive changes in the work flow of PartDesign, along with who know how many bugs. So for production work you should steer clear of it and stay on 0.16.

Is there a way where I can assign custom settings on freeCAD to the moves of the space mousse?

The settings can be reversed, at least on Linux and Windows. I assume it should be possible on OS X as well, support was recently added. Go to the Tools --> Customize menu. In the dialog, you will find a "Spaceball Motion" tab.

More info: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.ph ... up_FreeCAD

[PhilBali]

Thank you NormandC for your very detailed reply.

I did check the customization tabs, but it seems you can only adjust the sensitivity and reverse the way it moves, but you cannot assign another task (please correct me if i am wrong) like make it zoom in or out when you push the space ball forward on backwards. as on mine this move make the part goes up and down. And Up and Down on the space ball make the part zoom in and out!

[PhilBali]

A NormandC
J'ai répondu en anglais car on n'est pas sur le forum Français et je viens de voir que tu étais francophone.

[tanderson69]

Thank you NormandC for your very detailed reply.

I did check the customization tabs, but it seems you can only adjust the sensitivity and reverse the way it moves, but you cannot assign another task (please correct me if i am wrong) like make it zoom in or out when you push the space ball forward on backwards. as on mine this move make the part goes up and down. And Up and Down on the space ball make the part zoom in and out!

try checking the 'swap y/z' checkbox

[PhilBali]

Excellent, it works perfect now! thank you very much. You rule Tanderson!!!