Guild of Writers

I've been looking at getting a 3D mouse, to assist in dealing with the problems I have in navigating within Blender and other environments. In particular I'm looking at SpaceNavigator:

http://www.3dconnexion.com/solutions/blender.php

Since their starter (PE) model does not cost much more than the mouse I tend to use (MX310) I figured it would be a reasonable investment. Does anyone have experience in using these things, either in working in Blender or other apps? I can't find one that's 'out of the box' over at MicroCenter so I can't test-drive the thing.

[Admittedly I'm also looking at this from a discount perspective - LL is working with Logitech to bundle in a free, reasonable-quality headset as their upcoming Viewer will work natively with the SpaceNav. And as someone who's gone through 6 headsets in 3 years, I'm always looking for spares. ]

--TSK

I have a LogiTech G7 wireless mouse, which for me is fantastic.

BTW that link is to a space navigator plugin, I don't use it, instead,
I switch to Object mode and hold down the shift key and press "F", that switches the camera to 1st POV and you can fly though your world

T_S_Kimball wrote:http://www.3dconnexion.com/solutions/blender.php

Yes, I've purchased such a device, especially for using in blender.
But when I purchased it some months ago, the only way to get it to work was to use a special compiled blender fork (2.44.2, NDOF) to support this device - other releases did not work for me. Maybe the situations looks a bit better now with 2.46 and the plugins, but I did not test them yet.
Although I'm a bit disappointed about the functionality; the device itself it a great one and works well, but if you use the cheap, small version (without additional buttons), it seems to be useable mostly for navigating your camera inside blender, and this works well. But minor support for editing objects, so I decided to continue to use my mouse and keyboard as everybody does. The integration into CAD software is better, like solidworks and such.