Inventor Fly mode with Space Navigator

Had a long week at work and on top of that I have reinstall win and all software so this post comes late in the day but still Thursday so hope you are not too disapointed.

I have been using a 3dconnexion space navigator for years and I wouldn’t think of doing Inventor and CAD in general without it. I still remember the “F4” spin command and I use keyboard shortcuts all the time, the multi character (AutoCAD) type, but my space navigator comes naturally.

There is an issue thou and that it’s running out of zoom. If you want to do a fly out type of navigation you can’t with the current Inventor settings and apparently it hasn’t been fix even in version 2015.

Scott Moyse has been reporting this for a couple of years and he even created an idea in the Autodesk Inventor IdeaStation and he has a fix for it. You do need to edit the windows registry; I don’t suspect anyone crashing windows from this but do make a backup of your registry file before.

1.       First, go to Inventor/Options/Display tab and mark down the current settings in the 3D Navigation section.

Here are my settings:

2.       Close inventor.

3.       Go to Start/run and type regedit

4.       Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion14.0\System\Preferences\Display

(I am using Inv 2010 which is Version14.0, yours will have a different number depending on Inv version)

5.       Double click on Viewing Command Options and change the Hexadecimal Value data to : 21

6.       Click ok and close the Registry Editor.

7.       Open Inventor and check to see if the settings in Inventor/Options/Display/3D Navigation are still the same, modify them back if they changed.

8.       Try out new navigation mode by activating perspective view on a model.

You need to move-release the space navigator in order to refocus-readjust zooming distance. You can’t do it in one smooth continuous movement.

The next trick I am going to share is adjusting the perspective view angle. While in perspective mode if you hold down CTRL+SHIFT+WHEEL UP/DOWN you will change the perspective angle.

                Mine is set to maximum for screenshots and presentations.

                This is how it looks with minimum perspective angle:

                 And this is how it looks with maximum perspective angle:

If you find it useful and want it implemented then go to the Idea Station website and vote for the change.

ADS

And the video of course: