I recently went back from using the F_keys as standard to using the Mac custom system control keys.
[for those unfamiliar with mac keyboard, the F_keys are triggered with the Function key in default Mac keyboard setup]
But the problem is that the 3DConnexion driver doesn’t recognize the F_keys keyboard shortcut while in Mac default, So all the buttons on the Enterprise device mapped the F_keys stopped working….
I tried to assign new [regular] key shortcuts to these Rhino commands that are by Rhino default mapped to the F_keys. but these do not work. It seems the F_keys are hard coded in Rhino….
I tend to make aliases in rhino for whatever I need the buttons to do, then cook a corresponding text macro in the 3DC panel that outputs the trigger alias and assign that to the button.
Kludgy, but it’s been the only reliable way I’ve gotten the buttons on the Enterprise (and the Pilot Pro before that) to work.
I’m mostly doing that (aliases that fire off an essentially one line commend).
Note that this example is just screenshots I did a long while back while setting them up that I keep around for reference when I need to recreate them, so they aren’t all “hooked up” in the stuff that follows.
These get “fired” by macros in the 3D Connexxion pane that are named correspondingly and just puke out the alias’s assigned keystroke - I always preface these with the application name so I dont’ get ones for say fusion and rhino confused, and they’ll all sort together alphabetically which keeps all the macros for a given app at one place in the list:
The assignment is done under the “configure” and you select Rhino as an app out of the list.
Then pick buttons (this is also where you change the axises to deal with the ever squirrely as hell mapping of those).
Pick the button in question, then change mapping to run macro and pick the previously created macro shown above from the list (and yet another reason why naming them with the app name in front of the function makes this easier to manage.
What I’ve never figured out how to do is put a “stock” mapping on the axises in place that fixes the zoom and up down always being backwards globally, and then just dealing with the very rare exceptions that DO actually get it right and set those apps to the defaults. (Like as goofy as it may seem a couple of the freeware cads actually get it right, go figure).
Because I can’t get the global stuff to work right I have to set this up for every application, every time I migrate to a new machine,utterly manually, and it takes an eternity to do.
I’ve tried the import config thing but it never works right and just mangles the hell out of the setups so it’s actually easier (and less of a nightmare) to recreate em when needed.
I find it just weird that this same issue has been in place with these people for WELL over a decade now (my first 3d Connexxion mouse had a serial port on it and you’d send out your prototype plastics to a stereo lithography shop to get rough plastics, so this had been an issue for a friggin eternity). My first encounter with one was at a trade show and the guy in the booth taught me how to remap the stuff so it’d actually work (the defaults have pretty much been wrong from day one).
in your example: you type the aliases but you haven’t add Enter so i’m [happily] surprised it works, it didn’t for me in the [old] past…. but maybe it was a Mac issue, I’ll try.
