iPod Touch Lanyard

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:03:10 -0500

I’ve been trying to find an iPod Touch case with a lanyard option, but they just don’t seem to exist, so I added a simple plate to a standard case. It’s just a bit of cut and drilled plastic from a broken bucket (thanks Fiona...), superglued on (I initially tried epoxy but it didn’t stick to the plastics involved). I’ve made it so there’s enough resistance on the lanyard that I can move the iPod up and down and have it stay where I want to.

Auto CenterPoint for SketchUp

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:27:38 -0500

Very useful plugin for SketchUp by Jim Foltz: Auto CenterPoint

All it does is add a center point to circles when they’re created, which is something I’ve always wanted. I used to have to create other geometry or a guide to mark the center, now I don’t have to.

Remapping Scroll Wheels

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:25:09 -0500

Using a SpaceNavigator tends to obviate the standard use of a scroll wheel in 3D apps, zooming. That frees up the wheel for other things. I like to use it to select tools instead of using button presses, scroll forward to select one tool, scroll backwards to select another. The movement feels very comfortable to me and I map my main tools to it, for example, in SketchUp I have select and push/pull mapped to the wheel. I also add a double-click kind of functionality, spinning the wheel forward or backward quickly selects two other tools.

Another thing I like to do is use mice whose scroll wheels can be pushed left and right (panning). Usually I map those movements to switch through two groups of tools, each press advancing to the next tool in the group. In SketchUp one group I use is Rectangle, Pencil, Circle, Arc. The trick is to reset the group whenever any other tool is selected, so it’s always the same number of presses to get to a particular tool. Three presses for the circle tool, for example.

Here’s what a ControllerMate (for the Mac) configuration that implements all that looks like:

And here’s the actual ControllerMate configuration I use for SketchUp. The mouse configuration is for disabling the scroll wheel usual function, and everything can be changed on a per app basis so the scroll wheel can be used normally in other apps.

http://www.gamerkitty.com/uploads/controllermate_scrollwheel.cmate.zip

AutoHotkey under Windows can be used to do the same sort of thing, btw. Kinda.

Note the button groups on the left that along with the scroll wheel and the opposite panning direction reset the counters that cycle through the tool groups.

SpaceNavigator
ControllerMate
AutoHotkey (free!)
Logitech VX Revolution - It has a very nice feeling scroll wheel!