Can SmartNav emulate the scroll wheel on my mouse?

[lnd_svyr]

Hi:

I searched and did not find. Doing cad work I use the scroll wheel on my mouse to zoom in and out in the viewports I work in--thousands of times a week. Can some sort of hotkeys be mapped to emulate scrolling (i.e., in cad, zooming) in and out? This may be the only thing keeping me from taking the plunge, probably still will and use the mouse separately to scroll/zoom, but....

Thanks if you can help!

[VincentG]

The software does have hotkey options for the scroll feature. Not sure if it will react the same in your CAD application.

[junkatagirinp]

The CAD (AutoCAD 2010 in my case) uses the scroll wheel for real time zoom. The application also lets you 'pan' the view by click & dragging with the wheel button.

I tried it with SmartNav's Scroll option. Real time zoom works just as you would expect. However, I'm not able to 'pan' the view. Without the ability to click-hold the wheel button (the way AutoCAD can respond), you cannot pan the view after zooming. You can't control what objects to zoom on.

So you still need an alternative input device, which has a wheel on it. It's too bad they don't sell just a wheel.

[junkatagirinp]

In addition to my previous comment, I have been integrating the use of a 3D mouse (a 3DConnexion product), which works well with 2009 and later versions of AutoCAD. Actually a 3D mouse is not really a mouse in that it has nothing to do with the cursor/pointer, which is controlled via SmartNav. A 3D mouse allows you to manipulate views without having to execute view commands manually, so it's a neat workaround (limited to working inside supported applications) to not having a wheel button. Also, it relieves your neck from the additional work for panning/zooming, which you would be doing a lot of otherwise. Just a thought.