The spacenavigator is sufficient for solidworks. It is typically used with your free hand and provides pan/zoom/spin fuctions whilst part selection remains on your mouse, this speeds productivity particularly with assemblies. I would estimate that the improvement is 30-50% over just a std. mouse. Also most of you who like me used the arrow keys to roll the model found that reduced laptop keyboards were a problem so this mouse solves this also. Really if you have already spent $4000 on your SW license it make sense to increase the usability of your investment by spending a little extra on a 3d mouse.

 

I use one just like this at work, with Solidworks AND AutoCAD. Heck! It even lets me zoom in Adobe Acrobat, if I want (I usually don't). Locking out the various axes from rotation/translation is a definite benefit, and the view keys on the RHS are very helpful.

I should add: I'm a lefty; my regular mouse is under my left hand, and my SpacePilot Pro under my right....no problem there at all.

Now I just have to figure out how to either re-write the Outlook macros to work with "Groupwise", or (hopefully) find someone who has already done that.

But what I'm MOST intrigued about is: can it act as a video editing control wheel in Adobe Premier Elements or Sony Vegas Pro?!

 

I don't agree that these speed up productivity in Solidworks, and in fact, I think that these are redundant and over the top for Solidworks, especially given their price.

What I use instead is a really good mouse in combination with keyboard shortcuts. I have a Logitech MX mouse (£49), with which I can assign the middle-button-click function to one of the buttons which sits under the thumb ('back' I think it is by default).

This allows me to rotate about the mouse point by holding that button & moving the mouse. I can zoom in/out (stepped) about the mouse point by using the mouse scroll wheel.

My left hand then hovers over CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, TAB and S on the keyboard, for the following functionality:

Panning = Hold CTRL + Thumb-Button & move mouse
Fine zoom = Hold SHIFT + Thumb-Button & move mouse forward / back
Change window = CTRL + TAB
Don't auto-constrain in sketch = Hold CTRL
Pop-up common functions = S

There's enough there to make me very fast and render a Spacemouse redundant.

 

I first used a spacemouse more than 10 years ago with Inventor. The Inventor integrated drivers are particularly good, the best application for it I have tried.
I have used it with Pro-e but the drivers were disappointing with the version I used (Wildfire 1)
Now, I am using Solidworks and have bought my own spacemouse because I can't live without it! The drivrs are pretty good although probably not as good as I remember Inventor.
My colleague tried mine and immediately bought his own.
It is true that the rotate/zoom features in SW work well but myself and colleague are in 50's and suffering from RSI due to the years of rapid finger movements with wheel and click. Do yourselves a favour and use a product which will protect you from premature joint damage. When it's gone it's gone!
The only gripe is that the versions and drivers become obsolete very quickly as operating systems/CAD versions change. These things are a shed load of money and it is annoying when you have to ditch a perfectly good mouse because it wont work on the latest versions.

 

That is one of the features of Inventor I miss, being able to zoom into sealed fabrications and look round from the inside. While it's a feature of Inventor rather than the Spacemouse, it really is cool to use it as a joystick and fly round.
My present spacemouse is now having problems with Draftsight. If I touch the puck while a drawing is open all the text and dimension disappear. Guess I'm going to have to upgrade hardware before Win7 is even dead and buried.

 

I use the space explorer with SolidWorks and love it. I wish I had one for home use. I particulary like that you can re-program the buttons to be any key from the keyboard. It helps save a lot of time by having all the short cuts I commonly use right under my finger tips while I'm moving the model around.

I think once you get used to it (which can take a little time) it makes navigating around your 3D parts a lot quicker.

 

3D Mouse and 3D CAD are the perfect couple, I would rather give my right arm away than my 3D mouse.
I use a 3 year old SpacePilot with programable LCD interface together with SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Sketchup Pro, Google Earth and Adobe Acrobat and I have never experienced any issues.

 

I've used (3DConnexion's) SpaceExplorer and SpaceNavigator and while I think they're good products, I'd rather use the zoom, rotate, select, etc. functionality that SolidWorks offers with the mouse. I understand that the 3D mouse can be programmed (depending on the model you purchase) but with the right keyboard shortcuts I feel that I can do exactly the same thing as a 3D mouse. But that's just my opinion.

 

I've been using the 3D connexion models for a few years and I can't do without them now. They are so useful.
It takes a while to get used to them but then it just becomes automatic and you don't realise you're using it til you sit at a computer without one. They're useful for assigning shortcuts to too.