Friday, April 15, 2011

The 3D Connecxion Has Been Made...

With Revit 2012 now supporting 3D Connexion devices, I decided to get out my old Space Traveler. It had been about a year or 2 since I last had tried to plug it into a computer. In that time, I've switched from XP to Vista, gone through several laptops and several version of Autodesk products have passed. I found out that 3D Connexion no longer supported this device and the last driver published was for Vista x64bit. I eventually managed to get it installed, however, not everything works as great as it used to.

So, I dropped a note to 3D Connexion telling of my plight and that I wanted to evaluate their devices for the firm I work with, HMC Architects. In the end I spoke with a very nice gentleman there and he offered to set me up with a 30 day trial of 5 of their Space Explorer devices. At 3:19pm, Thursday April 14th, a box showed up full of glorious new hardware. It was a joyous moment marked by the scent of freshly manufactured parts off an assembly line along with a hint hardware envy... 

Granted, we will have to return them after 30 days, but by then I hope to get a better sense of what our designers think of using them in their day to day work. I plan to report back here some of their thoughts at the end of the trial period.

2 comments:

  1. I haven't used them with Revit 2012, but I hear good things about it.

    If you get really gutsy, try the new 3DX10 driver from the 3DConnexion Labs site.

    It's still in beta, but it it lets your 3DConnexion device work in 2D apps like Firefox & MSOffice products too!

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  2. I finally got a chance to try with Revit MEP 2012, using the Pro. ~whistles~ It's pretty nice, and the navigation feels so smooth (and intuitive, once you get used to how it moves).

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