FAQ

In 9.3.1 (also called 9.31), there is a tab on the /File/Preferences Dialog box that enables you to specify scaling factors to any of the 3 rotations or translations. There is also a “dominance slider” – we identify the dominant motion and then use the slider to scale back the non-dominant ones. At one end it is only the dominant and at the other end, there is no dominance. The dominance and scale factors on this dialog are saved to the user’s preference file and so once adjusted do not need to be changed each time he enters Femap.

 

In 9.3 and before (probably back to about 8.3), we advise the user to max out the SpaceMouse in all directions before using it each time. Personal experience of the output of the Spaceball is that we have no idea what the maximum value in each direction is (and your driver dialog allows the user to change all that – even while Femap is running). We then scale by that maximum. If you do not max out initially, we gather the maximums as we go and constantly update our scaling factors. This approach basically ignored most scaling factors on the Spaceball driver dialog and gave somewhat strange behavior each time you started Femap.