 Hey guys, Vladimir here. So today I've got a bit of a different video for you and there's a question I wanted to answer. On a few occasions I've been asked how is it that when I orbit my models in Fusion 360 that they look so smooth? The short answer has to do with one of these contraptions here. So these are the 3D connections space mice. Basically the magic behind these is that you have this wheel here that replaces your scroll wheel on your mouse and the shift key. So you can do pan orbit zoom all with just this wheel here. So like I said it's made by a company called 3D Connection. The two models I'll be showing you today are the space mouse wireless which at the time of this recording sells for $169 and the space mouse wireless pro which goes for $329. I'll leave links to these down below. A few years ago when I first heard about it I bought this one here the little guy and then a couple months ago 3D Connection reached out and they said already offered to send me a space mouse for me to try and since I already had this one I asked that they would send me the big brother here the space mouse pro and they did. So I brought this up in my Fusion 360 live class my weekly online class that I do and I wanted to get just a survey of how many students were actually using these. I think I only had like one out of 20 students had had one but there was a lot of curiosity the students wanted to know you know should they be getting one is it worth it like what's the purpose. So there was enough interest that I thought you know what let me do a video and I can show you how I use this and then that way if you have any questions you know you may be curious as to how it works with Fusion 360 whether you should get one maybe you've been debating it but yeah so let me just I'll show you how I use it and what I think of it and then maybe it'll put you in a better place to make a decision. But first let's let's back up a little bit and ask like why like you may be asking hey I've got a perfectly capable you know $15 $20 mouse and the keyboard shift button works perfectly fine for zooming scrolling and orbiting. So it sounds like you're just paying for something that's going to allow you to do something that you can already do and you're perfectly right you'd be absolutely right if you're just if you're thinking that. So why don't we just hop into Fusion 360 really quick and I'll try to show you what the difference looks like. Okay so I've got a little design here this is a sculpture I was working on. Before I demo the space mouse just a quick work from well me if you're looking to get up and running with Fusion 360 you'll want to check out my quick start course down below it'll be the most efficient quickest and easiest to follow and actually very enjoyable way to get up and running and creating your own models with Fusion 360. The link to the course is down below all right back to the space mouse and let's say for example here I'm going to go to home view and I want to I'm going to remove let me see like this panel here and let's say I just want to here I'm at this home view I want to be able to inspect inside here to look at one of these brackets so I have to orbit around and inside to see it and then I want to come to the bottom and check out the bottom of the base here so the normal way with just the mouse and keyboard I'm going to click my you know my middle mouse button and shift to just kind of orbit and I'm kind of kind of orbit till I get to a view I want and then maybe I'll scroll wheel to zoom in and then I'll pan to adjust and then kind of zoom in and so there I am you know maybe do some slight adjustments here to pan and then okay now I see what I want there and now I'm going to zoom out and then I'm going to orbit to the bottom and then I'm going to zoom in and then I'm going to pan and then zoom and then you're kind of always doing this like panning or being zooming all these little micro adjustments to get there to what what you want to see so yeah I mean it's not you know not incredibly hard it's fine but let's just look at now how that looks by using the space mouse so let me just click here to go to home view and I'm going to grab my space mouse and so the way this would work is I would just kind of orbit and then zoom right in and here I am so now I can you know you can see how smooth that is I'm not doing these like panning orbiting panning zooming panning it's just it's very smooth and now I want to go here to the bottom I'm just going to zoom out come right in here I am right there to look at that bracket and then so yeah you see how obviously that's just a much cleaner much just a nice a nice flow there and then a really nice feature here is if I kind of go back out you know again like orbiting you'll see me kind of do this just like rotating a model I'm going to go from like a bottom or top to a bottom view but you also have these buttons here which makes that incredibly useful so you know instead of having to come up here to your view cube and click on top you know and then kind of lining it up into place and maybe you can use these arrows to move it and you can you know do this to look at the different views but with the space mouse pro the buttons are already there so I can just right away click on top go to a front go to a right view here and then there's a button to just kind of orbit and move to the right let me go to a different design here this is my apple watch little charging stand I had made so again just kind of can move it around very easy very smoothly to come in here maybe inspect some of those joints and again if you want to go to a top view just click the button right there and it just it positions it perfectly front view right view and then you can kind of just move it around to see each side so yeah I mean you see the difference here another part where I think this really shines and I've gotten to I haven't experimented too much with it yet but I can already see is within the forms environment here because when you're in the form so you're doing a lot of like you know just tweaking and just you know you're sculpting the model so really quickly let me see I'll just click here and again I have my shift key right on the space mouse so I can just go ahead and grab that to select both of these right click go to edit form and then so here's something where you you can you know manipulate these and then you're always kind of like looking and turning it to see how it's behaving and the really nice thing there is that alt button and since I'm on a mac I programmed that to be the option button because then when I go ahead and extrude a new face I just have that right there and I can go ahead create a new face again just or a bit look at it maybe I want to scale that up you know maybe create another new face here you know so again if I deselect shift button is right there hold it bring that up and just kind of so you're you're you're creating these new faces and you're being able to just kind of you know like move the object around without without like moving your hands anywhere your hands are all in one place and then so you know I don't really have anything in mind here but if I was just doing you know something crazy here I can just kind of come in you know and just continue making faces here and sculpting what I need and then the nice thing about that is the undo button that I programmed so you know you can you don't like something just that undo button is right there just undo it so yeah I didn't really have anything planned and I just wanted to kind of show you here how I think in the sculpting environment if you are using that that really a whole other added benefit for the space mouse here it's okay just I wanted to do just a quick little demo to show you the differences of how it looks by using the space mouse versus just using your normal keyboard and regular mouse the other big benefit and this is really just applicable to the pro version is that you get 15 programmable buttons and the reason why I think if you're going to get one honestly and you you can't afford the big one I would say go for it because I'll show you kind of the difference here when you're using the the small one it's got two programmable buttons but like so the setup would look something like this you get the benefit like this wheel is exactly the same in both you got that six degrees of freedom sensor so you can you know do all the nice smooth orbiting but the problem is you end up having to go back and forth right like for your keyboard shortcut so you're modeling you turn it you know e4 extrude and t4 trim you're having to do that and you mean you've got two programmable buttons but that's it with the 15 buttons here now you basically can you know you don't you know completely you know disregard the keyboard but you're not going back and forth as much now you know you've you've got the ability to really like this becomes your command center you know and you're orbiting and you've got all your shortcuts right here programmed just the way you like it you know exactly how you want to use fusion and it just makes for a more flow I guess it is the right word like you get into that design flow and you could really do that with the option to program the buttons here then I find that the only reason then I really need the keyboard for is just for my dimensions right you want that number pad here so this is really sort of my you know home position and then I'm just using this to enter dimensions and you know it's the keyboard so I don't really have to look I'm just kind of go you know typing them in and then you know I've got this to just control everything here on the left so this workflow I find works really well you know because otherwise even though you may be quick with your shortcuts just that sort of split second that you have to kind of look away find the key press it you know and it's you know you're looking down and up it just it's it creates friction there while you're just trying to focus on your model and designing so that's that that's a huge benefit with this one is the programmable buttons okay let's focus on this little guy for a minute so the first thing you're going to notice right away when you pick it up is this thing is heavy it is dense it's pretty much a pound in this little package right here so heavy and like it doesn't feel like a toy right this isn't just some plastic toy it is it is solid but the beautiful thing about that is when you put it on your desk it's not going to slide around it is anchored in there so you can move and twist this and it's it's going to stay put so you know that was one of the things I'm pressing right away about it so you don't get all the buttons you get on the pro you get two programmable buttons you know but the trade-off is you know I guess it's smaller so it's more portable although it is a pound right like if you're I'm not going to throw this in my bag and if I'm going to be like traveling or walking all day I mean you're going to feel that after a while but if you I guess you want to throw in your bag because you want to go somewhere else to do some design work and you're going to be there for a while then I guess that's fine but yeah so you got your you know your pros and cons there both of these are wireless so you can you know use it wireless or plug it in but it isn't bluetooth it's the 2.4 gigahertz wireless technology so you have the little usb plug that you have to plug in which I guess if you're in a desktop situation and you've got plenty of usb ports it's not an issue but it is unfortunate that you now have to sacrifice one of your usb ports in order to use it not sure why I didn't just go with bluetooth I looked at the website and they talk about the reliability of I guess that technology and giving you the same you know reliability as it's as wired option but I don't know I mean I've got a bluetooth mouse and it's pretty reliable so maybe we'll see that in a future update but it would be nice to use it without having to you know sacrifice a usb port and so for that reason I tend to when I have it on my desk I actually just have it plugged in that way I don't have to worry about you know the battery running out although it's really not an issue because the battery on these things and this one's got one month life a battery life and this one it has two months and that's based off of if you look on the website you know five days of use for eight hours a day so yeah great battery life on them okay so that's the regular wireless mouse now let's look at the layout of the pro so on the top row here you've got your four programmable buttons actually they're all programmable it's just that these other ones are labeled and they have sort of specific uses but you can change them so on the left side you're seeing you've got your escape key very useful because I use this escape key a lot infusion 360 here control shift alt if you're using a Mac you can reprogram this to be your option key a menu key here and here you've got a rotate left you've got a top view front view right view and a lock orbit and then a fit button here which will fit your design right to the screen I ended up changing these for example on the fit button I made it my project tool so when you're sketching you want to project the line I use that for that and then the menu button I don't see myself using the menu a lot so I just made this my undo button you'll probably find just like I did that you'll program the buttons and then as you use it you'll realize okay you know I'm using this tool a lot more it makes more sense to program that one so you probably won't get it right in your first iteration of trying to figure out a good workflow but it's good just to jump in and start using it program them to how you think you're going to need it and then you know you can just update it it's really easy to change the buttons to program all you do is you open up the app right here and you just go to your buttons tab and you can easily assign the buttons all right that's my review on the 3d connection mouse so I showed the little guy here you know small but very capable and then you've got your pro option here which you do have the 15 programmable buttons which you know I'd recommend this one honestly if you're a serious cat user all right so what do I think of this is it worth it so here's the thing if you're someone who's using Fusion 360 daily you know then yes if you're happened on daily you're using it even like you know multiple times a week I'd say yes it would be worth it but if you're just a hobbyist who's happened on like once a week or so to design it's probably not going to be worth it especially because you have to invest the time to get comfortable with it and if you're just only you know using it once a week you're just never going to get there right you're probably each time it's going to be like you're you're learning it from fresh you know starting over so you do have to put in the time to really get comfortable I actually have a little like tape on my monitor telling me what the program buttons are just you know so I can get used to enforcing my brain to to actually use it instead of going with the keyboard because in the beginning it that's going to be the easier way is what I know which is the keyboard but if you just kind of force yourself to use it you'll eventually get to that you know that design flow where it is going to be a lot less friction and just you're going to feel much more in control when you when you actually get the hang of it so yeah at the end of the day it just all depends on how much you're using it and whether it's going to be worth it for you because you do have to put that initial time in to get used to it you know it is learning a new tool so there's quite a bit of like muscle memory that you're going to have to put the time into develop but after you've gone through that process I would say yes it's definitely worth it so what's my overall opinion I gotta say I love this thing and it's definitely after you get used to it because now so my usual setup is is this here on my iMac so normally I'm designing on my desktop computer here and I just have this plugged in and it stays put but I also have Fusion installed on my laptop my Dell XPS 15 and so I'll take that with me go somewhere and open up Fusion and then I always like I reach for the space mouse and it's not there and then there's there's a little bit of annoyance when I realize like annoyance and disappointment that it's not there that I have to now go back to you know using the keyboard so and it just and it feels clunky doing it that way now instead of having the space mouse so that's how I kind of know like you know I really enjoy using it and it just kind of feels more at home now than when I'm like this using Fusion than using the keyboard so in summary yes if you're using Fusion 360 enough it's definitely worth it if you're just the occasional user probably not all right I hope this has been helpful to you if you have any questions leave them in the comments and if you have or had a space mouse before I'd love to hear your experience what did you think of it is it something you loved or did you try and just wasn't for you let us know in the comments below all right guys I will see you soon