Spaceball 4000 FLX and Inventor (10sp3a & 11sp2)

pgwaltney · Post by **pgwaltney** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:02 am

I have 2 Spaceball 4000 FLX's - 1 at home with Iv10sp3a & 1 at work with Iv11sp2. The 2.8.2 driver will not load correctly for either platform - the toolbar is dead within the program, eliminating all customization. I also get a load error every time I start my computer at work. The "new hardware" balloon shows up, along with an error dialog stating that the "coinstsb.dll" file is missing. All I can do is cancel out of this, and the "hardware loaded improperly" balloon then lights up. I've tried re-installing the driver numerous times at both locations with no luck. OS is XP Home & XP Pro. Any ideas?[/img]

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 12:13 pm

pgwaltney

Make sure Inventor and all applications are not running.
Run the installation choose custom
Uncheck the Inventor plugin.
The Spaceball 4000 Serial devices do not use the plugin.
Inventor will still recognize the device
You can use the 3dcontrol panel to map the buttons etc.

pgwaltney · Post by **pgwaltney** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 12:39 pm

No difference. Still get the missing file & improper install errors at startup, and the only customization available are the macros.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:16 pm

The coinstsb.dll Is a file located in the system 32 folder.

Try unzipping the download into a file on the desktop
Open the folder
open components
open 3DXware
double click on 3Dconnexion 3DxWare.msi

Does the 3dx driver install?

pgwaltney · Post by **pgwaltney** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:14 pm

The download is nothing more than an .exe file - there's no way to 'open' it. I did at least copy the missing .dll from my home computer, where I don't have the errors on start-up. Hopefully, that will solve that problem. I'm still very curious as to why the toolbar commands are inoperable in Inventor - it works just fine with SolidWorks & AutoCad.

agoenczi · Post by **agoenczi** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:39 am

Hi pgwaltney

You should try to unzip, as Fred proposed. Use Winzip or WinRAR, but not ZipGenius, as ZipGenius won't uncompress the file.

Afterwards proceed as described by Fred with the uncompressed files.

pgwaltney · Post by **pgwaltney** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 5:29 pm

Apparently I'm missing something. The driver download (2.8.2) available on this site is an .exe file. Whether I zip it or not, it is an install only. All I can do is run it. Is there another software file you're referring to?

Copying the missing .dll file did solve the start-up errors at least. I did notice something - the Inventor help files included with this driver all refer to the Spacepilot controller. Don't know how I missed that before. I guess the question is - will this thing just not work with Inventor?

agoenczi · Post by **agoenczi** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 1:56 am

Hi pgwaltney

The SpaceBall hasen't any support in the Inventor add-in. The README applies for the SpacePilot only in the version v2-8-2 of the 3DxSoftware. The later versions of the 3DxSoftware have support for the SpaceNavigator, SpaceExplorer and SpaceTraveler but unfortunately not for the SpaceBall (-s).

lynnsaunders · Post by **lynnsaunders** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:56 pm

I have been through this thread and cannot get past the missing file named coinstsb.dll.
Any help would be appreciated.
I am trying to use a flex 4000 with rs232 interface through a usb-rs232 adapter. The adapter shows up in Device Manager as COM3. When I plug in the 4000, I get a baloon that says "spaceball 4000 flx found" I downloaded drivers 2.8.2 today.
Thanks,
Lynn Saunders