Simultaneously use any edit tool including move, rotate etc while moving the 3d mouse (3d connexion)

Archive User Feedback
1

I would like to make a request regarding the 3d connexion mouse.
Simultaneously use any edit tool including move, rotate etc while moving the 3d mouse. Nathan Letwory demonstrates this in a 3 min video back in 2011 (sculpt mode). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQha4QPo1E0
You can see the 3d mouse navigation and sculpting tools work very well together. Sculpting and moving the view at the same time. I would love to see the edit mode work the same way in 2.8.
When an edit tool is active and in use, the 3d connexion mouse locks. But unlocks when the edit command has been completed.

2

I don’t think the 3D Connexion support has received any development for quite some time.

I’ve asked them to include the industry standard 3D Connexion navigation tumble movement which ALL other supporting apps have in a bug report a year or more ago, and nothing has happened. :frowning:

3

I’m surprised the 3dconnexion has lost the support. I can’t work without it. Can we gather a few blender users so we put the pressure on. Personally, more important than the left/right mouse click!

4

While most of the 3D mouse functionality works fine in 2.83-2.91, there are still two main issues in my opinion:
The first is already mentioned in the topic title, it’s an overal Blender problem where you cannot navigate while a command is active. Meshmachine proves that Blender in its current state is capable of navigating during commands (with a mouse). While that issue is probably first in line to be addressed (I think I saw I task on this but cannot find it atm), the 3D mouse navigation should also be covered.
The second thing, is that while 3D windows are covered in terms of navigation, the reverse is true for 2D. I would prefer to be able to also pan 2D views with my 3D mouse, rather than just zooming. In other contexts, such as the outliner, the 3D mouse should be able to scroll the view.

5

Slight correction, mesh machine (and other add-ons) allows specific navigation keybinds to pass through during modal operations. If the user changes their navigation hotkeys to something custom these passthrough systems will typically fail.

We would need some way of identifying an operator as being ‘navigation’, because right now Blender sees no difference between view.rotate and mesh.knife, they are both just modal operators.

Once we can identify navigation operators, we need some way via the API to allow them to pass through.

After that, every modal operator ever written would need to add support for it. Alternatively, some new bl_option flag to opt out of automatic navigation passthrough (since there are definitely situations where you might like to prevent navigation during a modal op)