One has to find a way that their hand is basically in a natural rest position, palm curled in as possible. My method as above is to use high sensitivity so my fingers loosely move the mouse.
Thought it might be worth while showing my forearm / wrist / desk height / mouse & Ā± wrist pad set up by taking some elevation shots;-). So Iāve taken one photo using the wrist pad, and another without. Iāve realised I tend to rest my elbow on my chair armrest as well. I prefer to use the mouse without the wrist pad, but if I do, I tend to get a sore wrist where I pivot it on the desk/mouse pad. I was thinking, maybe I should try a wrist pad that you can wear like a sweat band. The height of my wrist pad & the fact that it canāt move with my wrist, means I have to use my wrist to move the mouse, as opposed to moving the forearm as well. More freedom of movement with out the wrist pad I guess. Hmmm, could be a new thing. Wrist support / sweat band combo. I know when Iām gaming in the heat of summer, sometimes my mouse hand can get a bit sweaty (which could explain the stained area on my wrist pad). Anyway, hope contributes to the conversation. Iād be interested on what other peopleās set up is. Also, my desk surface is pretty much level with my chair armrest which is 700 mm off the floor, if thatās any help. Cheers.
Does the support move somehow while you use it?
yes it swivels around if your elbow moves. Height and angle can be adjusted.
I used to use Logitechās MX Master mouse but have for some months been using the MX Vertical which has much reduced my right hand fatigue and I donāt get an odd twinge in my left shoulder any more.
I use AutoHotKey to remap certain keys to perform some SketchUp and Layout commands. For example, in SU I have remapped the Tab key to perform a double click, CapsLock a single click. I use the BackOut plugin and have the Backquote key assigned to this action.
I bought a Wacom Intuos 5 a while back but couldnāt get it to work well with SU 
@J.L Unless itās me, Curicās To Level plugin doesnāt seem to work in SU 2019.
Iām quite surprised that you are OK with the twist in your arm. (as palm down on the table is not the relaxed/natural position for the arm)
Am I right, that with Evoluent mouse you have to move the whole hand, instead of just fingers (in āclawā grip)? I tried to mimic this and it seems more difficult. (although really like vertical mice for how comfortable they are)
Just a suggestion about ergonomics. You could try a standing at desk. My son uses one every day and heās noticed a great improvement in his posture.
I would say I have to move my hand the same amount with the evoluent mouse as I do with a regular one.
Nice. Looks pretty cool. Guess I can remove the right arm rest on my current old desk chair to make room for it. See, I knew this topic was a good one. Be good to attend some tech conference somewhere to take 'em for a test drive. Not far, just around a couple of blocksā¦
P.S. I like the look of that chair in background as well. Nicely ventilated which would be good in the heat of summer.
Letās take a look Curic DIO
If you search ābungee chairā you can find them.
container store has them $149 but iām sure you could find elsewhere. ebay too.
I usually donāt move my hand much - most of mouse movements are done by fingers (claw grip, not a palm grip) and wrist.
I use a razer mouse and setup up macros using their synapse program. I call them āsuper click inā and āsuper click outā. The super click in macro hits my shortcut for select tool, then double clicks in several bursts, then hits my shortcut for deselect. The super click out activates the select tool then hits esc several times. I assigned to the forward and backward buttons on top of the mouse. Pretty slick!
I donāt really care for the outliner, but to make it more useful check out the ārename by layerā extension. Works great with our ConDoc model organization.
I went through the same experience some time back and I tried using my other hand to mouse withā¦ swapping the two buttons, of course. In no time it became second nature to mouse left-handed. Since then, I have periodically alternated mouse hands. I highly recommend the practice. Itās really not hard.
Right-on, the wrist/palm rest was something I invented in 1989 and supplied for 8 years before it was copied by China. Itās small but will totally eliminate all problems if used every time you use a mouse. My handle is ErgoDesk:-)
Good idea for a topic.
The thing that gets me is the scrollwheel click, which can require a lot of pressure on some mouse types. The scrollwheel itself gets a LOT of use in Sketchup - much more than any other software I know. A good scollwheel with a light movement, easy click - and if possible - accelleration/momentum, is a MUST.
I recently changed my Steelseries Sensei to a Logitech G Pro Hero, and the Hero has a much softer click and scroll wheel pressure, which definitely reduces fatigue.
The other thing you can do on many mouse type is to map one of the extra buttons on the mouse to perform a Doubleclick.
If Trimble is serious about Health and Ergonomics, the two things that I think would make a difference are:
- Collapsable Tool menus; panels on the right to pop out a tool panel so that we dont need to scroll up and down so much to use Materials, Outliner, Scenes, etc. The menus are too large and dont fit on a verticle panel very well, so scrolling is inevitiable.
- Allow zoom speed to be adjusted and allow it to be customised (ie, speed up the more you zoom). It could even be adjusted based on the size of the model (large model extends = faster zoom).
- Utilise a Hover-over technique to allow us to click into nested groups/components. Imagine if you hover over a group as you pass across various geometry, the bounding box of the relevant geometry becomes highlighted and a signle click allows you to open it. @eneroth3 is this technically possible??
- scenes , layers, materials and components items that are contained within collapsable menus (utilising groups/folders). Again Im stealing an idea from Adobe which has a good layer managment system that seems to work great, even on complex structures).
An easy to click scroll wheel makes a huge difference. The mouse I started using SketchUp with was brilliant in this regard but sadly stopped working after some time (I think I kept it so I could use ti for comparison later).
Do you mean toolbars or inspectors? I really donāt want fly out toolbars like in SketchUp Free. They are harder to navigate, slower to use and requires more clicks which in un-ergonomic. Inspectors on the other hand I think worked better before the tray was introduced. Because the way they overflowed you were strongly encouraged to collapse what you didnāt use rather than having the double scroll (or separate into different trays that you have to switch between). You can resize the individual inspectors but then you need to scroll more inside of them. In any case, a search field in Components, Materials and Layers, similarly to the one in Outlier, would save a ton of scrolling.
Zoom speed is already affected by model size (or rather distance to what you hovered). However some sort of acceleration could be interesting, as long as it is optional.
The Ruby API doesnāt have a way to open groups and components for editing. There are hacks like simulating key presses and context menu clicks but they are platform and possibly language dependent so I personally never resort to them. Iām too proactively lazy to want to maintain such a hack.
Other than that it is quite easy to make a tool that selects whatever is hovered (like most native modification tools do when not having a pre-selection) and let you open by a key press (e.g. enter). However I donāt know how many clicks it would save you. Youād still need to click a tool icon (significantly smaller than any group/component), a menu path (several clicks) or utilize a keyboard shortcut (ergonomic but there is a limited set to use) just to initialize the tool. Unless you open like 4 levels all at once I donāt think it would be more ergonomic, and unless you do it often you wonāt get used to taking this secondary path.
I have a gaming mouse. It has a special button to the left of the LMB which generates a triple-click. I find this very useful in Sketchup.
I use a program called X-mouse button control to switch the functions of the MMB and the RMB. This means that I orbit by holding down the RMB, which is much easier and more natural than holding down the MMB. Also, what many people may not realize is that if the obit tool is activated via the mouse, and you press the LMB while orbiting, the pan tool activates.
This makes navigating in SU much easier. With this button configuration, I rest my hand on my mouse in a normal, relaxed position. To orbit, I simply allow my middle finger to drop onto the RMB. Then while orbit is active, a tiny bit of downward pressure on the LMB activates pan. This feels very natural and unstressful. Also, I have a 3d mouse in my left hand, which I use for about half my navigation, reducing the workload on my right hand.
But back to your original question, X-Mouse Button Control would be an incredible program for you because it allows you to, for example, set a button on your mouse to generate a double-click every second as long as it is held down. This means that you would simply have to point at the object that you want to open, and hold the button down until you are in the correct group. Or you could configure your scroll wheel to āscroll intoā or out of groups. Of course then you would have to zoom some other way.
Hope this helps and have a good day!