CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

8 November 2005

Product News

3Dconnexion Boosts SpacePilot Performance for Autodesk Inventor

3Dconnexion, a Logitech company, announced a significant advancement to its innovative adaptive sensing technology, allowing the 3Dconnexion® SpacePilotT 3D controller to detect and rapidly adapt to more than twenty-one environments for Autodesk Inventor®. As the user's workflow moves among environments and sub-environments within Autodesk Inventor, the SpacePilot automatically detects the workflow change, updates its function keys with new commands and displays them on its LCD screen. Default functions are provided for each environment, and the user can also customize the function keys by choosing from the entire set of Autodesk Inventor commands.

"We are very pleased with the workflow solution that 3Dconnexion is providing to the Autodesk Inventor community," said Richard Runnells, senior manager of Manufacturing Partner Programs at Autodesk. "The ability to sense so many environments and command sets, along with 3Dconnexion's navigation of assemblies, parts, drawings and other documents, makes SpacePilot an essential and fun tool for our users."

To provide the increased detection capacity and performance, 3Dconnexion has developed a new, sophisticated sensing mechanism and coupled it with switching-speed improvements. To enable user customization, 3Dconnexion has also developed a software tool that allows access to any Autodesk Inventor command and uses simple drag and drop for mapping commands to keys on the SpacePilot.

"During the course of my design work, I move rapidly and randomly from one environment (Assembly, Drawing, Sketch, Part) to another, and it is a great boost in productivity to see the SpacePilot keep up with my pace and always offer me the shortcuts I need," said Fernando Romero, project engineer, Sulzer Hickham. "It is as though it can read my mind and then keep up with my complex workflow."

The new capability is a significant power booster for Autodesk Inventor users-the user not only gets the benefit of simultaneous panning, zooming and rotating with the motion controller, but also benefits from an enhanced workflow through this advanced sensing and adapting mechanism and other SpacePilot features such as "quick views"-Top, Right, Left, Front, Iso-commands, which can be executed at the touch of a button.

The new advanced version of the SpacePilot software is available immediately on 3Dconnexion's website by downloading the 3DxSoftware package for Windows XP/2000. More information is available at http://www.3dconnexion.com/AutodeskInventor .

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