3Dconnexion input devices

3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator

Driver installation

Linux

FreeCAD supports drivers from project Spacenav. This is a project aiming to create an open-sourced driver which is compatible with the proprietary drivers from 3Dconnexion.

Compile Spacenav from source

This is recommended since your distribution might provide an outdated version. For example, Ubuntu repos contain version 0.3.0 as of 2011-04-10.

• Download the following files:
  • spacenavd-0.5.tar.gz
  • libspnav-0.2.2.tar.gz
  • spnavcfg-0.2.1.tar.gz
• Unpack the archives into a folder in your home directory.
• Enter the directory spacenavd-0.5 and run the following commands:

./configure
make

• If this was successful, run the following commands as root (or prefix with sudo.)

make install
./setup_init
/etc/init.d/spacenavd start

• This installs the spacenav daemon, configures it to automatically load on system boot, and starts the daemon without having to reboot.
• Now it is time to check that your device is properly detected. With your device unplugged, run the following command and then plug it in.

tail -n100 -f /var/log/spnavd.log 

• If the output looks something like this, you can continue.

Device detection, parsing /proc/bus/input/devices
trying alternative detection, querying /dev/input/eventX device names...
  trying "/dev/input/event1" ... Power Button
  trying "/dev/input/event2" ... 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator
using device: /dev/input/event2
device name: 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator

• Now enter the directory named libspnav-0.2.2 and run the following commands:

./configure
make

• If this was successful, run the following command as root (or prefix with sudo.)

make install

• Look in the directory libspnav-0.2.2/examples/. If you want to test your device, compile and run either one of the two examples.

• Follow the same pattern to compile and install spnavcfg. Make sure to run spnavcfg as root, or no settings will be saved!

Install from repo

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install spacenavd

OSX

TBD

Windows

TBD

Setting up FreeCAD

TBD