3DConnexion SpaceNavigator on MacOS

S1mon

I have the latest MacOS (11.6), and the latest 3DxWare 10/1.2.0/10.7.0, but it's flaky. It mostly works in Safari, but not at all in Chrome.
(On a PC with Windows and Solidworks it always loses focus which is very frustrating.)
It really seems like 3DConnexion barely manages to keep things running. Their forums don't seem to get a lot of support, and this driver is still in Beta for MacOS Big Sur which has been out for quite a while.

fnxf

I would try to learn to work without it. And I’m saying this even though I’ve been working with their products since 2001. Together with Onshape it kinda works, but never properly, Mac or PC. (Especially the focus thing). I have reported bugs and sent 3DConnexion the logs, but they are very slow to answer and slower still to fix them.

I’ve learned to work without it, but I still need a mouse for it (trackpad doesn’t do it for me)- I’ve been having very good results with the Logitech M220: https://www.logitech.com/de-ch/products/mice/m220-wireless-mouse.html

S1mon

For me, doing a lot of spinning of models with the middle mouse button is a recipe for carpal tunnel pain. The SpaceNavigator (or other versions of 3DConnexions 3D mice I've used over the years) is the difference between being able to do CAD for long periods of time or not.

S1mon

In case other people are having this issue... I reinstalled the driver/plug-ins and now it's working in Safari and Chrome. Sometimes it gets weird in Safari still and will start just zooming the browser window when it should be talking to Onshape. In that situation, rebooting fixes it.

S1mon

Just in case there are others looking for this info...

I have my Space Navigator working with Safari (15.1) on Monterey (12.0.1) on an M1 Mac. The trick is that the latest beta driver from 3DConnexion does NOT work reliably for very long on Big Sur or Monterey. You need to downgrade slightly. See this post on their BBoard system. The link for the working driver is here.

EvanReese

S1mon said:

Just in case there are others looking for this info...

I have my Space Navigator working with Safari (15.1) on Monterey (12.0.1) on an M1 Mac. The trick is that the latest beta driver from 3DConnexion does NOT work reliably for very long on Big Sur or Monterey. You need to downgrade slightly. See this post on their BBoard system. The link for the working driver is here.

Thanks for this! I've disliked pretty much every interaction I've had with 3DConnexion, but I really like the device when it actually works.

S1mon

@Evan_Reese

No problem. 

My interaction with the person on their helpline was less than perfect. They didn't bring up this critical piece of info about Onshape and the downrev driver. The one thing that they said that I discounted at the time, but I'm starting to believe: their HW/SW doesn't like it if you connect the Space Navigator through a USB hub. They also said that a genuine Apple USB A to USB C adapter is best. To me that all sounds like an excuse for a flakey driver, but I am getting much more reliability since I switched to the downrev driver and an Apple USB adapter.

S1mon

Not sure what triggered the issue except perhaps the latest Onshape update, but my Space Navigator stopped working again on my Mac (both Chrome and Safari).... 

The good news is that 3DConnexion has a new "release candidate" which came out December 13th. I just installed that and now it seems to be working again, and the blue LEDs are enabled (far from critical, but good to see that they can manage basic functionality again).

We will see how long this stays stable, but hopefully this will be out of beta at some point.

Is anyone at Onshape actively using Space Navigators or other 3DConnexion products? Is this part of any regression testing?

fredrik_falkman

Hej! Glad to have found this thread! I’ve been mostly following the miles long one the Mac betas on 3dconnexions site. My mileage has been really on and off but with the official release in December it stopped working all together. Will try the downgrade trick. 

For me it’s the same - no 3d mouse - no extended cad sessions. I would gladly pay a recurring fee IF the thing worked reliably. 

S1mon

Hmmmm. I'm still using the release candidate from December and it's been working well. I can't find a link to that version anymore. I can see from the forums on the 3DConnexion site that others are having issues with the official release (10.7.0 on MacOS) and Onshape. I don't know why it's so hard for 3DConnexion to get this to work. There are free Onshape accounts that their testing team should be able to use.

fredrik_falkman

As very frequently for the past year, My Space Navigators (I have one at home and one at work) don't work again for my main setup which is:

Onshape in Chrome on an Intel MacBook Pro running Monterey 12.2.1

After an unprecedented lucky streak of two weeks straight of it just working, it stopped again yesterday. Not sure why, but there might have been a Chrome update.

Usually I get it to work if I:

- run it directly in one of the machine's USB ports
- reinstall plugins
- restart the computer
- wait a while before starting chrome
- occasionally restart 3DxNLServer

But this time nothing seems to help. Looking forward to a bit more plug-and-play. 

I should add that the 3DConnexion demos always seem to work.

Cheers

S1mon

Ugh. What version of the 3DConnexion driver are you running? For what it's worth mine is behaving relatively well these days. It's certainly been a rough ride, and occasionally I still get random issues (usually just a Chrome restart will fix it). I was trying for a while to run the Space Navigator through my Dell monitor's USB hub, with mostly success, but I started having issues at some point and went back to a direct connection (with Apple branded USB A to C adapter dongle).

S1mon

Anyone else having issues with their 3DConnexion device lately? I've been keeping everything updated (MacOS, browsers, and 3DxWare) and I'm having to kill and restart or just restart 3DxNLServer a lot (and usually the browser as well).

It's hard to tell which piece is the problem, but for the record: MacOS Ventura 13.2 on same hardware as above, Chrome Version 110.0.5481.96 (latest), and 

S1mon

I've made the mistake of installing the latest version of 3DxWare (10.8.1). I'm having horrible flaky results. Someone on the 3DConnexion forums claimed that they were having success with 10.8.0, unlike previous versions.

Does anyone have a direct contact at 3DConnexion?

wayne_sauder

 I'm running (10.8.1) And have not had a lot of issues. It's a lot better than the last driver version which wasn't even usable. 
 The 2 issues I see are, that one button on my space mouse enterprise doesn't work right, and sometimes in onshape the middle mouse button doesn't pan correctly. 
 What issues do you see? 

S1mon

For me, it just stops working altogether. Sometimes restarting the browser helps. I'm tying both Chrome and Safari. I do almost everything else in Safari, but I have been using Chrome for Onshape for a while as I've had fewer weird issues with Onshape and with 3DConnexion. 

I'm on a SpaceNavigator, which is also pretty old hardware these days. If I knew that a new device would work perfectly, I'd gladly spend the money of new hardware, even thought the old hardware isn't "broken" physically. I get that older MCUs may be hard to continue to support. However, I'm having a hard time knowing what to think with 3DConnexion. It seems like Mac is a much lower priority than Windows, and Onshape is definitely a low priority for them.

wayne_sauder

 I have a fairly new space mouse enterprise and the cad mouse Pro wireless. The space mouse has to be plugged in directly to my mac book pro via an Apple adapter (no hubs or off-brand adapters) and I run the wireless mouse via Bluetooth. This setup has given decent results, but....

 I don't know what to think of them either. I would consider a switch to something else if I could find something that was as capable as the space mouse.  

S1mon

The latest fun with this version - the settings for axes are spontaneously changing on their own. It seems like zero testing staff was harmed in the process of releasing this driver.