Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

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Ohyra
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Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:02 pm

Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by Ohyra »

Heyya!
Just started playing with FreeCAD and most things are awesome so far - except that I cannot move around properly in the 3d view... :( In the options you have only four fixed options for 3d navigation that suck really hard because all of them except the touchpad option use the middle mouse button. Since that doesn't work on my mouse it is really frustrating to navigate when drawing.

I work a lot in Adobe Illustrator and navigation there is the best and most simple: ALT+scroll to zoom and SPACE to pan. Works soooooo good and I never have to fiddle around the keyboard/mouse just to do simple navigation.

Forcing the user to use middle mouse is imo really bad and feels weird ergonomically, please add a simple option to change this! Touchpad layout but with scroll wheel + PGUP/PGDN would be a great improvement.
jmaustpc
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Location: Australia

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by jmaustpc »

In CAD style you can just hold the Ctrl button then use the left and right buttons in different ways so that you can very quickly and conveniently switch between zoom/pan/rotate.

In CAD style navigation, with the control button held

Right click = pan
then quick click and release of left click = zoom
then click and momentary hold left mouse button = rotate

This works very well and is very convenient once you get used to it.

You can also ...if you want...use the third button....but you definitely don't have to.

On most, even really cheap, modern mice the scroll wheel can be clicked to give you the third button. I just bought one for $3.50 (Aussie dollars) in a shop at full retail, so they are not expensive.

But as I said you don't have to use a third button at all. My track ball does not have a third button, but I used it as I described above for a long time, in CAD navigation style.

I suspect making these functions easily custom configurable, would be a lot of work for very little advantage....but others may disagree...and of course being open source anyone can code it if they see it as being a good idea. :)

Jim
mario52
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Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by mario52 »

hi
a small documentation Mouse_Model
mario
Maybe you need a special feature, go into Macros_recipes and Code_snippets, Topological_data_scripting.
My macros on Gist.github here complete macros Wiki and forum.
jmaustpc
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Location: Australia

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by jmaustpc »

mario52 wrote:hi
a small documentation Mouse_Model
mario
Hi Mario
you are right, but
jmaustpc wrote:In CAD style navigation, with the control button held

Right click = pan
then quick click and release of left click = zoom
then click and momentary hold left mouse button = rotate
this information below is not shown there.

One of us should up date that page, one day. :)

Jim
mario52
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Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by mario52 »

hi jmaustpc
jmaustpc wrote:One of us should up date that page, one day. :)
Yes it takes a new drawing with the right button
jmaustpc wrote: In CAD style navigation, with the control button held

Right click = pan
then quick click and release of left click = zoom
then click and momentary hold left mouse button = rotate
OS: Windows Vista
Platform: 32-bit
Version: 0.14.3263
Python version: 2.6.2
Qt version: 4.5.2
Coin version: 3.1.0
SoQt version: 1.4.1
OCC version: 6.5.1

does not work with me
mario
Maybe you need a special feature, go into Macros_recipes and Code_snippets, Topological_data_scripting.
My macros on Gist.github here complete macros Wiki and forum.
jmaustpc
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Posts: 11207
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 6:28 am
Location: Australia

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by jmaustpc »

mario52 wrote:hi jmaustpc
jmaustpc wrote:One of us should up date that page, one day. :)
Yes it takes a new drawing with the right button
jmaustpc wrote: In CAD style navigation, with the control button held

Right click = pan
then quick click and release of left click = zoom
then click and momentary hold left mouse button = rotate
OS: Windows Vista
Platform: 32-bit
Version: 0.14.3263
Python version: 2.6.2
Qt version: 4.5.2
Coin version: 3.1.0
SoQt version: 1.4.1
OCC version: 6.5.1

does not work with me
mario
Really? I did not know that. I wonder if its some how a KDE/windows thing, but I would have thought it would be platform neutral. Its always worked that way for me...as long as I can remember. I have always used FreeCAD on KDE4 so I wonder....
Ohyra
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:02 pm

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by Ohyra »

jmaustpc:
CAD navigation with CTRL + mouse works great! The rotation was a bit weird, but way better than before. :)
Thx for quick answers!

If I was any good with coding stuff I would of course just change the program to my own needs but that is not my area of expertise. :P

I have a not too old five button Intellimouse Explorer but middle button almost never work properly in any program so it's really super mega annoying with programs and games that lock middle mouse to an important function...
jmaustpc
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Location: Australia

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by jmaustpc »

Ohyra wrote:jmaustpc:
CAD navigation with CTRL + mouse works great! The rotation was a bit weird, but way better than before. :)
Thx for quick answers!

If I was any good with coding stuff I would of course just change the program to my own needs but that is not my area of expertise. :P

I have a not too old five button Intellimouse Explorer but middle button almost never work properly in any program so it's really super mega annoying with programs and games that lock middle mouse to an important function...
So it worked for you but not Mario.....

can you please post your Help menu...about FreeCAD data, so I can see what versions of all the libs and O/S are? Are you on Windows or KDE or etc. ?

Jim
mario52
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Joined: Wed May 16, 2012 2:13 pm

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by mario52 »

hi
jmaustpc wrote:CAD navigation with CTRL + mouse
Yes ok but only the right button

(sory hadn't done ctrl)
mario
Maybe you need a special feature, go into Macros_recipes and Code_snippets, Topological_data_scripting.
My macros on Gist.github here complete macros Wiki and forum.
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NormandC
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Location: Québec, Canada

Re: Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!

Post by NormandC »

Hello Ohyra,
Ohyra wrote:Please make navigation buttons reprogrammable!
I'm too lazy to dig that up right now, actually I doubt I would be able to, but in a very old topic (2 years if not more) the lead developer jriegel mentioned he does not want to make mouse navigation customizable. Something to the effect it would complicate things whith help requests related to mouse interaction.

As a matter of fact, I know of no CAD software that allows you to customize mouse interaction, beyond very simple things such as reverting mouse wheel zoom. FreeCAD offers 4 different mouse models, that's 4 times more than any other CAD program I know of.
jmaustpc wrote: I wonder if its some how a KDE/windows thing,
It works well in Unity/GNOME too. I didn't know this, thanks for the tip!
jmaustpc wrote:On most, even really cheap, modern mice the scroll wheel can be clicked to give you the third button.
Last week I purchased a brand new Logitech m560 cordless mouse. I've always had Logitech mice and I was missing the side buttons for forward/backward that I used a lot for web browsing. Was also hating the cord on my current cheap Microsoft one.

Well, turns out this m560 is specifically designed for Windows 8, and has NO MIDDLE BUTTON. And it seems I'd have to jump through hoops to map the damn side buttons to anything useful, as right now they do nothing. In the past Logitech mice were plug-and-play in Ubuntu. :evil:

So I'm returning this crap this weekend.
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