Spacepilot getting confused between Fusion 360 and Inventor

[joel280986]

Hi.

I have an old space pilot and after managing to get the 10.4.10 driver working in Fusion 360 (see earlier post) I came across another problem. Initially it works fine but then it suddenly thinks that is it using Inventor (see picture). This happens even when i click on the application. I don't have Inventor on my machine so I have no need for the configuration. Is there a way of stopping it going over to Inventor every-time?

Thanks

J

3d con.JPG (30.48 KiB) Viewed 17179 times

[jwick]

It doesn't really think it is Inventor. That is just the name we used for that cfg because we first saw that component delivered with Inventor. In Inventor, it is/was a Home screen of sorts. I think the user used it to pick the file to open.
We've given it a more generic name in recent driver packages.

Does the device work regardless?
With so many changes in the Autodesk/Inventor/Fusion 360 landscape, it is likely going to be difficult to use old driver packages.

[joel280986]

Hi JWICK

That's a bit strange as it does recognise it when I first open the program and use it for a couple of minutes (see picture below) and everything works fine
It then goes back to the Inventor-home config and wont come out unless i restart the driver. When it is in the 'Inventor-home' config it does not work at all. Is there a way of stopping the 'Inventor-home' config and keeping the 'Fusion 360' config

Thanks

J

3d con 1.JPG (32.54 KiB) Viewed 17169 times

[joel280986]

Hi Jwack

I find that slightly strange as the Spacepilot does recognise the program when i first start the driver (see picture below). It then changes to 'Inventor-home' config after a few minutes. Is there a way of stopping the 'Inventor-home' config from starting / being recognised?

Thanks

J

3d con 1.JPG (32.54 KiB) Viewed 17169 times

[jwick]

You can try deleting the cfg.
Hover over the 3Dx systray icon when it says Inventor-Home. The balloon will tell you the name of the cfg in use.
This file will be in the 3DxWinCore / cfg dir. Delete it and restart the driver.
You can't do any harm. You can always reinstall. It's just a file.
This driver was from a long time ago.

[joel280986]

Hi
Tried to delete the configuration but it still recognises it as AdCefWebBrowser.exe (AdCefWebBrowser.xml)
The space pilot still says "Inventor -home "
Any other ideas?

[jwick]

What file did you delete?

[luping]

joel280986, I recommend you invest on a new 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse series product, like the SpaceMouse Wireless/Compact/Pro/Enterprise. Though a bit pricier, it should worth your investment over the long run.

Full disclosure, I'm not in any way affiliated with 3Dconnexion, just an end user of 3Dconnexion devices.

[Myself]

I have a solution for this. It's hacky, but hacky is better than throwing perfectly good hardware in a landfill.

First, while it's confused and thinks you're in Inventor, define a new macro, which pushes a key combination that isn't used for anything else on your machine. In my case, I'm using Ctrl-Shift-H. Then, assign that macro to as many buttons as you'd like, within the Inventor context. I went a little nuts...

(Side note, putting an exclamation mark in the name of your macro is a bad idea -- if you subsequently try to edit the macro, it crashes the program! Still works just fine, you just can't edit it.)

Then, install AutoHotkey and whip up a script that hooks the key combination you just put in the macro. For Ctrl-Shift-H it goes like this:

Code: Select all

$^+H::
	sleep, 1000
	process, close, 3dxnlserver.exe
	process, close, 3dxprofileserver.exe
	process, close, 3dxservice.exe
	sleep, 50
	run, C:\Program Files\3Dconnexion\3DxWare\3DxWinCore64\3DxSmartUi.exe
return

Now, when you find your Spacepilot a little spaced-out about where it is, oh look! All those "I'm not inventor!" buttons, just smack one! (The sleep 1000 makes the script wait a moment for your finger to spring back up off the button; I had trouble without this.) We slay a few processes (Are all of these really needed?), pause for another blip, then restart the UI which forces the driver to come back up.

Et voila, the next time you click over in the Fusion window, it knows you're in Fusion! (Until you open a new file and it thinks you're in Inventor again, then just smack the conveniently placed button again.)

Nota bene: Don't have the AHK script running while you're defining the macro; it'll trigger and kill the driver you're trying to teach a macro....

[jwick]

Very inventive. And there is no real problem with restarting the driver, as long as F360 reconnects silently.

Perhaps I can help you with something a little more clean.

Which 3DxWare driver version are you running? It must be fairly old if you using a SpacePilot.
What other apps do you use the device with? It's easy to tell the driver to only use the F360 cfg.

The "Inventor - Home" cfg isn't Inventor. It is a cfg for a specific window that both Inventor and F360 use. It's a bad name.

[Myself]

And there is no real problem with restarting the driver, as long as F360 reconnects silently.

That it does, thankfully.

The "Inventor - Home" cfg isn't Inventor. It is a cfg for a specific window that both Inventor and F360 use. It's a bad name.

It seems to flip over to this whenever I use the "data panel" file selector at the left side of the screen. Which is fine; there's no need for a 3d input over there; it's a 2d context with a scroll bar. But then when I click back into the design panel (or whatever they call it, the main design pane) to continue working in 3d, it doesn't flip back to the Fusion 360 context, it stays stuck in Inventor. That's actually the problem, it's not flipping to Inventor in the first place, it's failing to flip back to Fusion.

Which 3DxWare driver version are you running?

10.4.3, the last anti-landfill version.

What other apps do you use the device with? It's easy to tell the driver to only use the F360 cfg.

Ooh, that would be perfect! No other apps at the moment, but probably Solidworks soon. A single config all the time sounds ideal; that's what I had with 3.16.3 and it was rock solid. Or at least, being able to manually force and lock the config would be a nice workaround.

I had really stellar results, perfect, everything was exactly the way I wanted it, with 3.16.3, except that it couldn't define the function of the "3d lock" button in the middle of the view pad, and I really wanted to redefine that. (It's mapped to ctrl-shift-G, and triggers the square-the-view macro also seen in my autohotkey script. That's the function that sent me down this whole rabbithole in the first place.)

While I'm here, I might as well ask about another workaround I considered, and which doesn't work: I figured, why not just clone the f360 config into the inventor config, so it doesn't matter which one is loaded? But weirdly, the "view" options don't even appear as things I can apply to buttons when in the "inventor - home" config. And the 3d control doesn't work at all -- it's like my input is being sent to the 2d file selector pane, despite my having clicked back into the 3d design pane. The only way to fix this on the eco-friendly driver is to kill it and let it reincarnate...

[jwick]

I don't have F360 installed. I can get it if we don't get somewhere quick.

There are two things to try with increasing level of impact:

1) When you go to this file selector window, the driver picks a specific cfg file. We can tell it to ignore that cfg file. I'm hoping it will also completely ignore the window (that I'm not sure about that w/o testing it). To see what file to change, hover over the 3Dx systray icon while this file selector window is in focus. You'll probably see AdCefWebBrowser.xml. This is the file we want to try to ignore.

To ignore it:
A) Delete it (from Program Files/3Dconnexion/3DxWare/3DxwinCore64/Cfg (or whatever the path is) and also from %appdata%\3Dconnexion\3DxWare\Cfg if you have one over there).

B) If that doesn't work, restore it, and open it in notepad/notepad++/or your favorite generic editor. Add the following CfgProperties section between these two lines:
... </AppInfo>
<CfgProperties>
<Access>
<Ignore>true</Ignore>
</Access>
</CfgProperties>
<Settings>...


2) Grab your Fusion 360 connection so the driver doesn't switch to anything else. Similar behavior to the 3.xx driver.
Add this line to the CfgProperties section in Program Files/3Dconnexion/3DxWare/Cfg/Fusion360.xml (or whatever the path is):
<Grab>Hard</Grab>
This will tell the driver to stick with F360 when it is running and not switch to any other apps. It's a big hammer, but it will relinquish control when F360 isn't running.
If this is working, neither the LCD, the 3Dx systray hover tooltip, nor the 3DxSmartUI window should show an app change when you switch focus around your desktop (while F360 is running). They should all stick with "Autodesk Fusion 360".

There's a distinct possibility that I don't remember how 10.4 works. It's from 2017.
If any of that doesn't jive with what you see on your filesystem, let me know before you start editing files.

If it doesn't work the way I describe, send me the files you edited (PM me a link).
Also turn on logging (3Dx systray icon). It will dump a boatload of information into a %localappdata%/3dconnexion/3DxWare/3DxService.log. I'd like to see that file also.

They are just files. You can't do much harm as long as you make changes only in those two dirs.
If you mess it up, uninstall, delete any other files it didn't uninstall and reinstall. Use our installer to do the uninstall or you could mess up future installations. Windows is particular about that.

[Myself]

B) If that doesn't work, restore it, and open it in notepad/notepad++/or your favorite generic editor. Add the following CfgProperties section between these two lines:
... </AppInfo>
<CfgProperties>
<Access>
<Ignore>true</Ignore>
</Access>
</CfgProperties>
<Settings>...

This was interesting, it would ignore AdCefWebBrowser aka Inventor, but it would get stuck on Windows Explorer or Microsoft Edge or whatever else was running, not noticing that I'd clicked back into Fusion.

2) Grab your Fusion 360 connection so the driver doesn't switch to anything else. Similar behavior to the 3.xx driver.
Add this line to the CfgProperties section in Program Files/3Dconnexion/3DxWare/Cfg/Fusion360.xml (or whatever the path is):
<Grab>Hard</Grab>
This will tell the driver to stick with F360 when it is running and not switch to any other apps. It's a big hammer, but it will relinquish control when F360 isn't running.

Bam! Flawless victory!

This is probably all I ever needed. And it's super simple. Thank you!

No other apps at the moment, but probably Solidworks soon.

I lied. Last night I got https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/fil ... 2021361606 installed and it is fantastic.

[jwick]

Great. Glad you are up and running.

I'm working with Fusion 360 at the moment for something else. That AdcefWebBrowser (aka Inventor) component is rather annoying. It seems to be the active executable until I open/create a part. I may need a way to handle that.

I didn't install that city skyline viewer but the reviews are promising. A 3D mouse does make a good "drone controller" to fly around a cityscape (it was one of our first demos). From the comments it seems people want to use our GUI to control the parameters. That should be possible, but a cfg file will have to be created that identifies the application and most importantly, the API the application is using. The app is probably using one of the standard Microsoft APIs, not a 3Dx API.

The 3D mouse works with a lot of Steam games.

[david_j_calabrese]

This is admittedly an annoying issue, and one must remember to click on the "Browser" bar in Fusion 360 to get the SpacePilot to kick into Fusion 360 mode.

Anecdotally, there seem to be a lot of users with SpacePilots still in use today, so another +1 for an Extended Support plan (paid) that involves official driver support for these legacy devices in 10.7.2, etc. I feel like this is money that 3Dconnexion is leaving on the table. And/or releasing an Open Source driver project so folks like those who wrote the integrated Blender 3Dconnexion driver can chip in.

Honestly, I think the appeal is that the SpacePilot is probably the nicest hardware that 3Dconnexion has produced, with an easy-to-read screen and many large, responsive, accessible buttons. I think the only shortcomings are the curved Config and Panel buttons which are tricky to press if used regularly. Also, the units were clearly built to last, because even heavily used devices look brand-new today. The next best thing would be a SpaceMouse Enterprise, although the screen isn't as readable, and price-point is fully half the cost of a ZBrush perpetual license.

A "SpacePilot 2" I think would be an interesting device to develop next, a mid-level entry something like a re-release of the SpacePilot Pro, though with a better, bigger, horizontal screen (could even be B+W) and the 1-6 buttons below the screen horizontally vs the 4+1 "quad" arrangement of the Pro.