First seen during a visited 3Dconnexions‘ German headquarters in the summer of last year, we’ve been itching to tell you about it since. The new SpacePilot Pro represents the next evolution in the 3d control specialists product range, following on from and improving on the SpacePilot product introduced a year or two ago.
You’ll notice that the companies core technology remains in place, using the control cap to provide full 3D navigation of 3D models on screen. There are the trademark features of the more advanced 3Dconnexion products, such as the programmable buttons, axis locks and such, but the big advance for this release follows on from the SpacePilot, with the addition of an LCD monitor, this time in glorious techni-colour.
In addition to giving you visual guides to the context sensitive short cut buttons, the LCD can be used to connect to your desktop, stream outlook calender items, tasks and to-do lists, even previewing email or streaming or even an RSS feed.
There are five new QuickView navigation keys that give you access to the usual top and bottom, right and left, front and back, two isometric views – they also add 90-degree view rotation of any view either clockwise or counter-clockwise – something that’s incredibly useful when you start to use it.
3Dconnexion has been doing a good job of late, adding a slew of application to its support list, either through its own drivers or through direct integration into the vendor’s code stream. Alongside the usual suspects of Inventor, SolidWorks, Catia, Pro/Engineer, NX and Solid Edge, there’s now support for almost everything from Ansys to Vero VISI and VX. The device will begin shipping later this month, costs 399 GBP and is backed up with a three year warranty. We’ll also be featuring the process that went into the design, development and manufacture of the SpacePilotPro in a forthcoming issue of DEVELOP3D – so stay tuned…
