3DConnexion SpaceMouse plugin

[EddyCurrent]

Right I'm back in business here, I had to uninstall the new drivers, reboot, install them again and rebuild the dll in Visual Studio, but all is working again.

[EddyCurrent]

Tau,
It's sounds like a generic Windows problem, do you have any other drivers you could try updating to see what happens there ?

[tau]

Eddy,

other device driver behave normal as far as i can judge this.

One other question: how does your SpaceMouse appear in the device manager. What type of USB Device is seen there. Could you make a screen capture of the device manager showing the USB devices? Maybe i can match the difference to my current hardware.

Connecting the wireless space mouse by usb cable (no driver installed) doesn't seem to make any difference to my setup.

Well i hope i can get this mystery solved without reinstalling the OS anew. 

[EddyCurrent]

New version attached, previous version removed.
This version is far better in terms of speed, control and smoothness of motion.
Instead of using a Matrix4x4 for everything I'm now using;

public void PanView(double dx, double dy)
public void ZoomView(float scale)

There is also another zoom that I might investigate later;

public void ZoomView(float scale, System.Drawing.Point zoom_point)

Now compensates for GUI rate so a large drawing should move at the same rate as a small drawing.
If the speed is wrong for your system, adjust the motion speeds via the 3DConnexion mouse dialogue.

Old version removed please see further down thread for latest version.

[EddyCurrent]

A better video added showing new version

[tau]

Eddy,


thank you for the screenshot & your support!! I really appreciate your help!


I could not locate the 3DConnexion entries on my puters device manager (except for one hidden entry of the KMJ Emulator, which cannot be reactivated).

So for now i put up a topic in the german 3DConnexion forum and wrote a message to the support as well. It gives me headaches that i'm trying to make all that's possible without any success and spent hours and hours just being frustrated.

Hope they can make it work somehow. I'm a bit dissapointed that there are so many equally annoyed users out there complaining about the same error, but there's no valid solution to that?! And i have been trying to install the v10 drivers for about a year without any success, but only the hope that the next release will fix this issue.

[EddyCurrent]

tau,

It gives me headaches that i'm trying to make all that's possible without any success and spent hours and hours just being frustrated.

I've been there many times myself 

They appear to be saying it's a Windows fault so might not respond.
Did you see this page ?; https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372835%28VS.85%29.aspx
it says 1603, the file is in use. There are some suggestions what to do also.

[tau]

Eddy,

I've been there many times myself   

I guess were the type that don't usually give up that easy, 

Did you see this page ?; https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372835%28VS.85%29.aspx

Yes, was on of the first things i cleaned up. So there are no residual files left!

Just for the time being i've installed the old 3.18.0 driver, which installs flawless(?!), but it seems it cannot use your 3DMouse.dll since CamBam reports an error loading the dll.

Well i have to be patient until someone from 3DConnexion technical support gets back to me to get rid of my problem.

Thanks again for your patience!

[lloydsp]

They appear to be saying it's a Windows fault so might not respond.
------------------------
I have a personal opinion about any vendor who releases a product for Windows that will not work, then blames Windows...

No doubt, there ARE problems in Windows that might prevent a, b, or c from working.  But if that's the case, then you don't sell the device!  You most certainly don't sell it, only to just hang your customers "out to dry", simply because you can cry "it's Windows Fault"!  If you knew that problem existed before you sold it, then it's NOT Windows fault, it's your fault.

If you sell me something, and claim it works, then it darned-well better work, or you'll be giving me back my money and paying me for my trouble (one way or another!).

LLoyd

[EddyCurrent]

tau,
I got this from their website;


How do I perform a full clean-up and re-install for Windows?

Before starting make sure you are logged in with full admin privileges.

1. Download the latest driver from the 3Dconnexion website and save it to an easy to access location such as the desktop.
2. Remove the current driver through the Add/Remove programs. Then make sure the 3Dconnexion folder in C:\Program Files is deleted.
3. Navigate to C:/Documents and Settings/your profile/Application Data or C:/Documents and Settings/admin/Application Data/ and delete the 3Dconnexion folder. Check both locations to be sure.

NOTE: on Vista machines the paths to the profiles will be found in C:/Users/your profile/AppData or C:/Users/admin/AppData/.

4. Before proceeding with the next steps, It is strongly recommended that a backup of the registry be made. Instructions to create a back-up and to restore the registry can be found on the Microsoft's Knowledge Base article Q322756.
5. Under the 'Start' button and 'Run' type in 'regedit' and hit OK to bring up the Registry Editor. There are 2 registry entries to remove: Under the branches ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER’ and ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’ and under each of their ‘Software’ folders delete the 3Dconnexion folder found in each location (note: sometimes there might not be one under the Local Machine key folder).
6. Go to C:\Windows\System32 and delete the files spwini.dll and siappdll.dll. On 64-bit operating systems, also go to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 to delete the files with the same names.
7. Remove the device if it is still plugged in and follow this by rebooting the computer.
8. To rule out installation conflicts with firewalls or antivirus software please disconnect from any local network if applicable (with most places, depending on how their network and licenses are managed you can physically unplug the network cable after logging back into Windows), disable any antivirus programs and turn off any local firewalls. The Windows firewall settings can be accessed from the Windows control panel. All of these items can be reconnected/turned back on after the driver is successfully installed.
9. Install the latest driver previously saved to the desktop. Once the driver is installed, plug the device back in and open the 3Dconnexion Control Panel (Sometimes the device will ‘wake up’ immediately after plugging it back in and other times it will not ‘wake up’ until after opening the Control Panel).

[Bubba]

After reading the posts and see the video created by Eddy I was thinking about getting one. But now seeing the trouble you guys are going thru I decided that I don't want to jump thru the hoops like you guys have. After all like Lloyd said.. You pay your money expecting this thing would work right out of the box.

[tau]

Eddy,

Well at least someone from the german support contacted me, so i could send them the log file. I hope they come with a solution! 

In the meantime i will try to redo the steps you mentioned. But i'm pretty sure thats all i did as well! But maybe there's a glitch somwhere that i might have missed. Let's see...


@Bubba,

i have been using 3D Mice for over a decade with no troubles so far. The problem is somewhat quite new (since the v10 drivers came out). So don't be discouraged by what i am experiencing here.

Believe me life (especially when dealing with lots of 3D-modeling stuff) is so much easier. Once you get used to it - and this takes in general not more than a few minutes - you can't imagine how you could ever do without it! 

[EddyCurrent]

I've just discovered this morning that the response is different if inches is selected as the units, maybe it's a 25.4 factor I don't know yet but the zoom and viewscale are affected by it.

There is an enumeration for units;  (the incorrect (for me) spelling of metre is killing me  )

Millimeters= 0, inches=1, Centimeters=2, Meters = 3,Thousandths = 4,Unknown = -1

I found that even if you change the language, text in the enumeration remains the same, that is what you would expect I suppose, but you never know without testing.

On my system, when I zoom in so that vp.ViewScale = 500, I get a measure of about 3.1 units across the screen width.
Because I'm using vp.ViewScale in a simple non linear equation for pan speed, movement was different for different units, it was a 25.4 thing.

For anyone interested the values for vp.ViewScale when CamBam starts  (on my PC at least)  are;

mm 3.779
inches 96
cm 37.79
m 3779
thou 0.096
unknown 3.779

So I applied scaling factors so my base unit for pan speed when CamBam starts is;

3.77 for all units.

New update added, this now compensates for selected units.

Edit: And then I saw these in CamBam 'Options'

Field of view 90
select fade 50
view focal length scale 2
view projection mode Orthographic

  maybe I need to play with these too

Edit: Old version removed please see further down thread for latest version.

[EddyCurrent]

Yes I did have to look at these;

view focal length scale 2
view projection mode Orthographic

New version now takes these into account. If the view projection mode is 'Perspective' then 'focal length scale' value is used in the pan speed equation. If in 'Orthographic' mode the value is not used.

Also added a new information line to CamBam log window showing version of 3DMouse plugin.

----------------------------------------------------
some CamBam methods used.

ViewProjection vp = CamBamUI.MainUI.ActiveView.ViewProjection;
float viewscale;
float focalscale;
string unit;
string projmode;
                  
unit = CamBamUI.MainUI.ActiveView.CADFile.DrawingUnits.ToString();
// Millimeters= 0, inches=1, Centimeters=2, Metere = 3,Thousandths = 4,Unknown = -1

viewscale = vp.ViewScale;
focalscale = vp.FocalLengthScale;
projmode = vp.ProjectionMode.ToString()
// Perspective, Orthographic

--------------------------------------------
These things and the previous modifications for the selected units were only a real problem when zoomed right in, they made it so pan speed was virtually zero.

[EddyCurrent]

Tau,
Do a search on your PC for this file, TDx.TDxInput.dll
If you find it, try putting a copy in the CamBam.exe folder or the plugin folder, it's possible the 3DMouse plugin might find it there.
This is not going to be the final solution but it might be worth trying for now.
A word of Warning ! if you have CAD or other software installed you might come across different versions of this dll, the idea was that only 3DConnexion would distribute it so that older versions would not litter the PC.