3Dconnexion input devices: Difference between revisions

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sudo xhost +
sudo xhost +
sudo /etc/init.d/spacenavd restart
sudo /etc/init.d/spacenavd restart
After that restart FreeCAD.
After that restart FreeCAD. On some distros this is necessary at each boot.


==== Install from repo ====
==== Install from repo ====

Revision as of 22:26, 16 September 2012

3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator

Driver installation

Linux

FreeCAD supports drivers from project Spacenav. This is a project aiming to create an open-sourced driver which is compatible with the proprietary drivers from 3Dconnexion.

Compile Spacenav from source

This is recommended since your distribution might provide an outdated version. For example, Ubuntu repos contain version 0.3.0 as of 2011-04-10.

./configure
make
  • If this was successful, run the following commands as root (or prefix with sudo.)
make install
./setup_init
/etc/init.d/spacenavd start
  • This installs the spacenav daemon, configures it to automatically load on system boot, and starts the daemon without having to reboot.
  • Now it is time to check that your device is properly detected. With your device unplugged, run the following command and then plug it in.
tail -n100 -f /var/log/spnavd.log 
  • If the output looks something like this, you can continue.
Device detection, parsing /proc/bus/input/devices
trying alternative detection, querying /dev/input/eventX device names...
  trying "/dev/input/event1" ... Power Button
  trying "/dev/input/event2" ... 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator
using device: /dev/input/event2
device name: 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator
  • Now enter the directory named libspnav-0.2.2 and run the following commands:
./configure
make
  • If make fails with the following error: ...
fatal error: gtk/gtk.h: No such file or directory
  • ... then you need to install libgtkmm-2.4-dev. Under Ubuntu, this is done like this:
sudo apt-get install libgtkmm-2.4-dev
  • When make has completed successfully, run the following command as root (or prefix with sudo.)
make install
  • Look in the directory libspnav-0.2.2/examples/. If you want to test your device, compile and run either one of the two examples.
  • Follow the same pattern to compile and install spnavcfg. Make sure to run spnavcfg as root, or no settings will be saved!

Restart

If sometimes navigator stops working, it is good to restart driver. To restart it, go to Terminal and execute:

sudo xhost +
sudo /etc/init.d/spacenavd restart

After that restart FreeCAD. On some distros this is necessary at each boot.

Install from repo

Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install spacenavd

OSX

One user managed to get space navigator working under OSX. However it was not merged in master yet. More info here

Windows

As of version 0.13, 3D mouse is supported under windows. You need to have propriate drivers installed, but since support was developed on lower level, it will override settings you set in 3D Connexion control panel. However, most of those settings can be set in Tools>>Customize dialog, under Spaceball tabs.

Setting up FreeCAD

3D mouse support was made with spnav project on Linux, and on a very low level on Windows. This means there was no support for any settings for a device, since on Linux there is no good support for this, and on Windows it is overridden. This is why two additional pages were added to "Customize" dialog.

Spaceball Motion

TBD

Spaceball Buttons

TBD


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