macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

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PistonPin
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macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by PistonPin »

Hello everyone!

I have a question. And depending on the answer to this question, I also might have a request. :)

Currently I'm trying to transition from Fusion 360 to FreeCAD. I had to give it a few tries, but now I feel accustomed enough to make the switch. (My main use case is designing functional parts for 3d-printing.)

I've spent the last two or three evenings trying to build 0.18 and 0.19 with SpaceMouse support – with mediocre success. (FreeCAD successfully compiled, but the resulting FreeCAD.app wouldn't start anymore if moved to the /Applications folder. It runs if it is started from the folder where it was built, but would throw an error about numpy.)

While I was going through the cmake options, I was wondering if it would be possible to have SpaceMouse support built into the official FreeCAD releases for macOS?

I know that the config script checks for the presence of the 3Dconnexion software and automatically adds support if it is able to find said software. But would setting

Code: Select all

FREECAD_USE_3DCONNEXION:BOOL=ON
and

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3DCONNEXIONCLIENT_FRAMEWORK:FILEPATH=/Library/Frameworks/3DconnexionClient.framework
be enough to compile it into FreeCAD, even if there is no 3Dconnexion software installed?

For now I stick to 0.17. :)

Cheers,
Alexander
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sgrogan
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by sgrogan »

PistonPin wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 10:44 pm For now I stick to 0.17. :)
I think its working again in https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/rele ... g/0.19_pre
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PistonPin
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by PistonPin »

sgrogan wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 11:00 pm
PistonPin wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 10:44 pm For now I stick to 0.17. :)
I think its working again in https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/rele ... g/0.19_pre
Nope, unfortunately not.
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looo
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by looo »

I don't think we have enabled this option for Mac. Package for spnav is available, but iicrc it didn't work out of the box.
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by wmayer »

be enough to compile it into FreeCAD, even if there is no 3Dconnexion software installed?
I think for macOS you need the SDK installed because when looking into GuiNativeEventMac.h then a couple of methods are declared as extern and it includes some header files which are not part of the FreeCAD code base.
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PistonPin
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by PistonPin »

be enough to compile it into FreeCAD, even if there is no 3Dconnexion software installed?
I think for macOS you need the SDK installed because when looking into GuiNativeEventMac.h then a couple of methods are declared as extern and it includes some header files which are not part of the FreeCAD code base.
Ah, okay, I see. Thanks for the clarification!
triplus
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by triplus »

FreeCAD 0.17 macOS packages were build and deployed from Travis, currently Conda packages are used for this purpose. If you are building FreeCAD yourself, you can take a clue from here:

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/blob ... travis.yml

Look for the following section located in the .travis.yml:
#Install the 3DConnexion frameworks
P.S. As for the Conda macOS packages. AFAIK there is no FOSS counterpart, like there is one for Linux, therefore the question for @looo i guess is, if the same step could be included in the build procedure on Conda, or not? That is adding a step of downloading and installing the 3DConnexion frameworks, before building the FreeCAD?
triplus
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by triplus »

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PistonPin
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by PistonPin »

triplus wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 1:01 am Another tutorial (Conda oriented):

https://vectronic.io/posts/building-fre ... ing-conda/
Thanks for the links, triplus! The second one was what I've used to build my semi-working version. :)

I will have a look at the Travis file and give it another go over the weekend. (I'm going to install a fresh macOS on a seperate hard drive for development tasks like this, so that I have a clean starting point.)
hajduk
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Re: macOS: Possible to have 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support built into official releases?

Post by hajduk »

PistonPin wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 9:29 pm
triplus wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 1:01 am Another tutorial (Conda oriented):

https://vectronic.io/posts/building-fre ... ing-conda/
Thanks for the links, triplus! The second one was what I've used to build my semi-working version. :)

I will have a look at the Travis file and give it another go over the weekend. (I'm going to install a fresh macOS on a seperate hard drive for development tasks like this, so that I have a clean starting point.)
Pistonpin,

did you have any success?
Currently I am very hesitant to move upwards from 0.17 as I need the 3Dconnexion device.

Regards

Martin
Last edited by hajduk on Mon Feb 17, 2020 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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