3dconnexion and Spaceballs

One of my early memories from getting started in engineering and CAD was those super-cool gizmos on the desks of the old Unigraphics workstations. The very first Spaceballs I remember were the old 2003 models. With the sphere surrounded by a plastic hand rest and an assortment of buttons. I’m not sure I really knew what it was when I first saw it. Maybe a mind-reading orb or a transmission device for telepathically interpreting designs. Whatever it was, it was cool, and the guy sitting there gingerly massaging it with his fingertips must have been very important. And smart. I was going to be the guy doing that some day, all I had to do was get through Calc4, Differential Equations, and Matrices and Boundary Value Problems. It seemed baffling that none of those courses introduced me to this device.

It turned out that those little gizmos were called Spaceballs. Great name, but I still didn’t know what they did. When I found out that they helped you visualize 3D space and manipulate the point of view, I think I was even more intrigued. Since I was a kid, watching the flashy intro to the news program with all of the shapes and words flying around the screen in three dimensions, I had always loved the idea of manipulating and visualizing 3D shapes. This Spaceball thing was going to help me get there.

These things are so cool that they sometimes show up on Sci-Fi movie sets, like the Avengers. Here’s the Hulk using one as he talks to Iron Man and Capt. America. If you watch these movies carefully, you’ll see a lot of the devices show up. Do you have more movie references?

The first time I actually used one was I think in 1997, when I started working for a SolidWorks reseller. The first model I was aware of was the 2003, described above. There were other brands and models aside from the Labtec SpaceBall, but none of them really caught on. There have been a lot of mice that tried to enhance the usefulness of a regular mouse with the 3D view manipulation of the Spaceball, but I think the success of the Labtec product was partially because of the design of the Spaceball – all the models look great, they don’t look goofy. Also they all feel really great in the hand, a combination of shape and materials. A real triumph of industrial design cross mechanical engineering.

The 2003 had become obsolete, and the 3000 series was now available. The first time I torqued on the little ball and saw the model fly around, I was hooked. Manipulating the view with the mouse was cool, but come on, 6 real-time degrees of freedom with a model on the screen – I’ve never really made peace with the mouse. I spent a lot of time and money trying to find a device that would do “mouse” stuff better than mice. When I realized I could use a mouse and a Spaceball, I was just in awe.

Starting with the 3000 series, the devices were more shapely. Because of the shape, I started modeling the various models in CAD, which was one of the earliest surfacing exercises I undertook. Plus, it was a great example to show CAD users, since it was a device that most of us were already familiar with.

Also, over the years, the connections have become more sophisticated. The early ones used a serial connector, which was big and bulky, and you didn’t always have an extra connection on your computer. Then they had PS2 for a while, and then USB. Now I understand there are a couple of wireless models. Wireless would be great for meetings. You can make salesmen and marketing types feel how cool it is to be an engineer.

Naturally, I bought one for home. It turned out they were kind of expensive if you bought them new but you could get them used pretty easily if you knew where to look in the days before eBay and Craigslist.

I was already pretty much hooked on 3D modeling, but the ease of manipulating the view of the virtual part in the palm of your hand really connected with me. So I always had a Spaceball, even after they changed the name of the device and the company, and after they were bought by Logitech. Most everybody already loves Logitech stuff, so the product line made a lot of sense for Logitech and fit in well.

The original Spaceball was made by Labtec, which was bought by Logitech (the computer peripheral hardware manufacturer) in 2001. The Labtec company was started in 1981 and made several computer peripherals of their own. After the purchase, the company name was changed to 3Dconnexion, but the Spaceball name never made it back onto another product in its entirety. It was always Space – somethingorother.

Today I have an old Space Pilot, along with a less old Space Mouse Pro. I’ve also owned the 4000 and the Traveler. The Space Pilot has some features that I miss on the Space Mouse Pro, but hey, that’s the age of planned obsolescence for you.

One of my favorite versions was the 4000, which had a removable wrist rest that could be used in left or right handed configurations. The Space Pilot had a nice display on it you could use to label keys and show you what mode was active.

It turns out that manipulating the point of view in CAD is just one of the things that you can do with this device. You can use it with Office applications for scrolling and zooming, you could use it in Second Life if you wanted to admit to that level of geekdom. You can scroll long web pages in a browser. Even within CAD, there were several buttons you could assign to specific commands or saved views, or even a num pad built into the device that you could use for input as well as Enter, Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Esc to cover some keyboard functions. My favorite was using the buttons for CAD hotkeys. You could use it on drawings to move views, or to assemble individual parts in an assembly.

I understand now they have a wireless version of the Space Mouse, and a new version of the Space Mouse Enterprise that includes some of the features of the older Space Pilot. I never really did warm up to the Traveler, which first came out when I was carrying the first generation of the 12 pound 17″ screen laptops. The smaller 3D puck was supposed to lighten the load of carrying that huge “portable workstation” around to do CAD demos, but I still walk lopsided thanks to that computer. The puck always slid around, and because they were round, I had a hard time identifying the buttons (they all look the same). The Traveler is now called the Space Mouse Compact, and it also has a wireless version (which is no longer round…)

I was sad recently when I learned that they stopped support for my Space Pilot for new CAD applications. SW2018 was the last version for which that model worked. Fortunately my Space Mouse Pro still works with the newest drivers. And of course it works with both SolidWorks and Solid Edge.

I really love these devices and what they have done for the art of CAD. They are quality devices, and over the years the company has had to endure a little competition, but somehow, no one has ever done it better. $400 for a computer peripheral is a lot of money, when compared to mice or keyboards, but when you think of the visualization capabilities it adds, it is money well spent. (plus, if you hang around enough, sometimes you can win one of these for free at a user group meeting).

Want to check out someone that 3Dconnexion itself crowned “King of the Space Mice”? Check out this link. Do you have any fond memories of Spaceballs or other models that you would like to share?