Continued movement after releasing SpacePilot knob in SW2008

Questions and answers about 3Dconnexion devices on Windows.

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49again
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Continued movement after releasing SpacePilot knob in SW2008

Post by 49again »

More a nuisance than anything....

Since I've started using SolidWorks 2008, I've noticed after a period of time that when navigating my view using SpacePilot, the movement continues for a second or so after releasing the knob.

I have found that stopping and re-starting the 3DcWare driver fixes the problem temporarily - maybe for a few minutes.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Steve R.
rstadie
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Post by rstadie »

Hello Steve,

Does this only occur in SolidWorks 2008, regardless of having a small or large scene opened? While you have this continuing movement, does this also affect our Cube3D demo?

Robert
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Post by jwick »

Make sure you are not writing a log file in the driver (3DxWare GUI: Tools->Write Log File). That will make things slower and slower the longer the file gets.
49again
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Post by 49again »

Robert -

I have only noticed this behavior in SW2008....and not all the time. I have not worked on any large assemblies yet, but this happens in single part files. I'll try the cube demo next time and let you know....

jwick -

"Write log file" is NOT checked - but is there a separate setting for that when I'm in SolidWorks?

Thanks,

Steve R.
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Post by jwick »

Hi Steve,

SW doesn't have anything like this that I know of. A trail file of some sort would be the suspect.

What is probably happening is that SW (or 3DxWare, or the MS system software) is being interrupted by a process with extremely high priority, like network traffic, anti-virus software, disk access, etc. The events from the SP all stack up during this interval. When SW then gets the CPU back, it eats up all those extra events and displays the results until the queue is drained. You see this so inconsistently because it is dependent on complex and unpredictable interactions of a lot of different pieces of software on your system.

You can try to increase the priority of the SW process (task manager) to see if that helps. You can also temporarily suspend your anti-virus software to see if that is the culprit. I'd only do that temporarily (I'd never suggest that you run w/o anti-virus protection). I'd temporarily disconnect from the network before trying that.

Jim
3Dx Software Development
49again
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Post by 49again »

Jim -

Thanks for the response.

Changing priority didn't seem to make a difference, but I'll have to coordinate with our IT guys before I mess with anti-virus or disconnect.

But, it appears I jumped the gun when I suspected my SpacePilot....I thought I'd try a view rotation using my middle mouse button, and I get the same "rubbery" behavior. So, I'm thinking it's NOT a 3DConnexion problem.

I'm going to submit a problem report to SW. I think you can close this on your end.

Thanks again,

Steve R.
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Post by jwick »

Hi Steve,

I don't think it is a SW problem either. SW only get as many CPU cycles as it gets.

OTOH, SW support may have more experience identifying the cause of the loss of CPU cycles (they take a lot more calls than we do). If they help you find the problem, could you do all of our users a tremendous favor and post the results here. It is an occasional problem, but common enough that we get a few customers per year with similar problems.

Thanks very much in advance.

Jim
3Dx Software Development
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