Has anyone else had this idea?

I use SW every day, but all I had at my desk was a standard mouse. I wanted to have more shortcuts than mouse gestures allow for, but the cost of a decent gaming mouse is a bit prohibitive. I wanted to have a 3D mouse, but even the cheapest ones are beyond my budget.

Then I had an idea. Right now, I'd have to say it's the best idea I've had in years. I bought a Steam controller.

It's hard to believe how many shortcuts you can bind to this thing...The haptic pads can be programmed to function as mouse input or configured to function as a D-pad or buttons and set up to switch between two different modes as needed. Nearly every input has a shifted mode that can be programmed as fully as the standard mode. Multiple keys can be bound to a single button press. Even the sensitivity of the mouse controls can be tweaked to such a specific degree (and further dampened when needed if a user-specified button is held) that there is no way you won't get the precision you need out of this.

Most impressive? Gyro controls. The gyro controls can be programmed so that tilting the controller will rotate the model. Bind a button to ctrl, turn on the gyros, and tilt the controller for a smooth pan. Bind mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down to separate inputs, and you can get a nice smooth zoom.

The newest software update made things even better. Now, you can program three different input styles to buttons (standard press, double press, long press) and have different actions bound to each. Add in the ability to shift the function of the vast majority of inputs, and that's a total of six different shortcuts bound to nearly every button.

Don't believe me? Right now I have 58 separate keyboard shortcuts bound to the controller. I still have at least 26 unused inputs just waiting around for something to do.

If you can install Steam on your computer (I had to get our IT department to make an exception for me), this is definitely worth a shot. If you tell Steam that SW is a "non-Steam game," you can even get the controller to switch automatically from your SW configuration to your general desktop configuration by opening SW through the Steam interface.

Edit:

I'm having some trouble getting the time to film myself making a part, a drawing, and an assembly. Work's crazy busy at the moment and I just don't have the time at home (for real; moving to a new place). In the meantime, here's a copy of my bindings and the video of the gyro controls in action that I previously posted in replies.

Message was edited by: Katie Hildebrandt- added attachments