Ow! My forearm is killing me!

[jloach]

After about fifteen years of designing with a mouse, the repetitive mouse clicking has finally got me. About halfway between the elbow and the hand gets very sore and stiff after only 15 minutes or so or IronCadding.

 

I've tried a Microsoft Trackball, which helped a bit but slowed me down immeasurably. I'm left-handed (because I don't have a right-hand!) which cuts down dramatically the number of devices available as mouse alternatives.

 

The action that seems to provoke the discomfort most is the 'left-click and drag', used for just about everything in IronCad! I'm going to try reversing the roles of the buttons.

 

Does anybody have any experience solving this problem?

 

Thank you!

 

John

 

 

[Alex Khenkin]

This really works: I have 2 mice on my machine. They both are "symmetrical" i.e. their shapes are not specific for left of right hand. I'm right-handed, and it takes about 2-3 weeks to learn to operate the mouse with the other hand, but once you've done it it stays with you, like riding a bicycle. Once you are able to alternate hands your problem will go away.

Also, there is one other thing - I have a problem with my wrists since I was a teenager - the joints sometimes get inflamed and hurt when I move the hand. Years ago I was given a strange advice - to tie a pure wool thread around the wrist joint when this happens. Since I had nothing to lose I did it, and the pain went away in a couple of days. Haven't failed me since. I have no idea how and why it works, but you might as well try it, too - does no harm, and doesn't cost much, either.

Good luck,

Alex

 

 

[Andrew Owens]

John,

 

Please excuse the length, it started out as a few tips and ended up a book!

 

I'm not sure if changing the button positions will help you, but it's worth a try. Sometimes I get cramps in my right hand when I use a mouse for a long time. When I was a kid I blew my right index finger off with a pipe bomb, and it just hasn't been the same since! Rotating a big design into just the right position used to be a problem on my old computer (It was annoying and made my hand cramp up). The system was relatively slow and had a standard video card, so big projects would rotate in wire frame mode, which made it impossible to judge the desired viewing position. On my new system (P4 2GHz, 1GB RDRAM) I have a professional OPEN GL graphics card. It really makes a big difference. Fifteen years of the same old computer usage habits are tough to change!

 

Try to change your arm position when you use your mouse. I assume that you jump back and fourth from mouse and keyboard a lot if youre only using one hand. Is there any way you can change the loading on your arm? Experiment with the height of your chair relative to your desktop. Does your arm hang in the air, or rest on the desk when you are using your mouse? Try using a padded arm or wrist rest. If you use the number keys a lot, try putting a stand-alone keypad on the left side of your mouse, and try making the mouse movements more sensitive, so you dont have to move your arm/hand as far when you drag, and experiment with mouse pointer acceleration. Maybe you can angle your keyboard toward your left hand for more comfortable access and less stress on your wrist? Try to be consciously aware of the amount of pressure you are using on the mouse buttons. It would be easy for anybody get used to using a lot more pressure than is actually necessary, I've found myself doing it on more than one occasion, especially when working long hours. It has often given my mouse hand cramps. I recently started using a MS wireless Intellimouse Explorer. It's the most comfortable mouse I've ever used; unfortunately I think you're out of luck because it's for right-handers. Just another perfect example of Microsofts insensitivity towards its customers!

 

I'm sure IronCAD could allow us users the option to change the way a few user-interface items work: Is it really necessary to drag-n-drop from the catalogs? I personally think IronCAD's implementation of drag-n-drop from the catalogs is an improper use of the drag-n-drop concept. If you just click on the desired catalog item and then click again on the position you want to place that item, the result would be the same, and with less effort. On the other hand, if you could click-select from the catalog and then click-drag a window in the scene that would give the user some feedback on the approx. size of the catalog item being added, that would be slightly more efficient than the current implementation. The same goes for Window Zoom and Rotate commands. Why can't we start a Rotate with the middle mouse button, and stop it with a single click of the left mouse button? It would make it possible to use the mouse wheel to easily zoom in-and-out at the same time the rotate command was active. What do you think? I use one of those 5-button mice; the two extra buttons are set to 'esc' and 'F-10' triball. It really speeds things up. Have you found a 5-button mouse that you can use with your left hand?

 

Try taking a 5-minute break as often as necessary, and at regular intervals when you are at the computer. Massage your forearm, wrist, and hand during these breaks, or find someone who can do it for you. Also, gently stretch your fingers and wrist often to increase flexibility, blood flow, and range of motion. The pain from a repetitive motion injury is usually caused by inflammation in the tendons; often there is some scar tissue there too. Don't get surgery, that would be your very very last resort, and if that type of surgery is necessary, let it only be done by the very best sports-injury specialists. I highly re

[jloach]

Thank you Andrew and Alex. I like the pipe bomb story. I have often dreamed of using a good naughty adventure as my reason for "losing" my hand. Being born that way is much too boring.

 

Good observation about the lack of ergonomically sculpted pointing devices for left-handers. Microsoft and Logitech should be ashamed for actively ignoring 15 - 20% of the human race.

 

IronCad does force you to click-drag a lot, and you're right that the interface could be made to allow for a click-release to select the item, move to the destination, and click-release to place the item. Good one too for zooming and panning. It's definitely the movement of the mouse while a button is pressed that's the big killer.

 

I've rolled up a small towel and placed it under my wrist in order to elevate the wrist about 1". This takes the upward bend out of the wrist, and seems to allow longer mouse use. Experimenting with the geometry of the upper arm, elbow, forearm and wrist will probably lead to a solution.

 

Thanks again, and happy mousing.

 

John

 

 

 

 

[Chris Lohman]

Trackball Mouse

 

 

[Corey Cooper]

I agree with Chris. Trackball mouse is the way to go, to minimize hand movements. I use one both at work and home, and it really helped me.

 

 

[Guest lfeldman]

Try vitamin B6. Also Logitec TrackMan FX all but eliminated my problem with CTS.

[pnobel]

I also vote for a trackball mouse. I've been using the same Kensington expert mouse (the old two-button version) for 6 years now, and it has never let me down. I briefly experimented with that logiteck optical mouse thingy, but after the smooth action on the Kensington (dig those stainless bearings) it felt cheap and stiff. The best cure of all, of course, is to spend less time on the computer. Try to get promoted to manager; then you can make other people do all the work. I started my own company, in part to escape the drudge of 10-hour days chained to the old cathode-tube. Now I work 14-hour days, and weekends too, but at least it is more varied.

 

best of luck.

[jloach]

Many thanks to all of you! I've got a Logitech "Marble Mouse" Trackball to try now, but it's going to take a little while to get accustomed to.

 

The absolute BEST solution offered was to spend less time on the computer. A computer is a wonderful tool, BUT IT NOW ABSOLUTELY CONTROLS MY LIFE!! One of these days: no browsing, no CAD, no email, no typing, no screens, no OS's, no drivers, no blue screens. Just live jazz.

 

Cheers, John

 

 

[jloach]

The Logitech Marble Mouse Trackball seems to be doing the trick.

 

Thank you all for all of your tips. The computer isn't my enemy anymore!

 

Cheers, John

 

 

[Guest EricFoy]

Yeah...

 

Live Jazz.

 

I like that one best.

 

-Eric

[mlacroix]

I understand your problem exactly and it doesn't take 15 years to aquire the problem. I would bet you that you keep the mouse in front of you just beyond or aside your keyboard. If I am correct, what you will find is that unconciously you put all of your upper body weight onto the hand with the mouse (I do the same thing). The best solution is to have the mouse in a position such that your arm rests natually beside you, like a same platform attached to the arm of your work chair. Unfortunately, that probably won't be possible. I believe the solution is one that does not require you to move your arm all over the place. Best suggestion is a tablet which you can place on your lap where hands naturally fall. The Intuos 2 from Wacom would be very good and it comes with a cordless and batteryless mouse and pen (pressure sensitive). The tablet has a cord so you need to make sure that you have space to move the cord around. Currently I have a cordless mouse which takes away the cord issue but my work area still requires that the mouse be well out in front of me and that causes my arm to ache. Maybe someday when I have time I will design a CAD workstation that is completely egonomic with a built in display (> 30") with high resolution. Anyway, best of luck in what ever you decide.

 

M. Lacroix

 

Mike LaCroix

[jloach]

With normal CAD operations the discomfort has just about disappeared with the trackball, but there's still something with IronCad that really irritates the forearm. When you have to edit the names of parts and assemblies in the part browser, the repetitive highlighting, copying and pasting of the information from line to line is a killer. Then, to make it worse, you have to copy all that info into the bill of material's part and description fields in the properties window of each part. Linked parts carry the data through, but it's really tedious, and the button and trackball motions wreck me.

 

The add-on tool that arrived with 5.0 for editing bills of material data is a small help, but still requires lots of copying and pasting. It would help a bit if that tool still allowed you to work on the scene, but you have to close it to get info off your drawing.

 

I've created a property called cut-off, which gets exported to drawings and appears as a column in bills of materials. Here, too, the cutoff length must be typed into the properties of the part, which is very time-consuming and arm irritating.

 

I dread when I finally get an assembly designed, and then have to start putting in part numbers and descriptions. Boring and time-consuming.

 

I wrote a VBA program for IC4 that automatically put the third sizebox dimension into the cutoff property, but haven't been able to make it work with IC5. The VBA hooks that come with IronCad are almost impossible for us non-VB folks to use.

 

I second the request for recordable macros.

 

To summarize, designing isn't bothering my arm much anymore, but the input of the part and description text data is terrible, awkward and time-consuming. It's so easy to make mistakes and omissions that much time is spent flipping between the scene and the drawing, filling in and correcting the bills of material info.

 

It would be great to have a function that would parse the part or assembly's title data into the part number and description fields in the properties window. If we could dive into VBA without too much trouble, it would be a piece of cake to write the code. Unfortunately, VBA is almost impossible, and the documentation is next to useless.

 

 

[dhovatter]

John

It has helped me that my desk has adjustable section in it that the keyboard and mouse set in lower then the the main part of the desk. that section has been adjusted to where it is just off my lap and my chair has arm rest. I agree with Mike. I found myself resting the heel of my hand on the mouse pad and supporting all the weight of my arm on it. Then I moved the mouse down on the stepdown part of my desk with the keyboard and that way I could rest my arm on the Chair arm rest and now my hand sort of hovers over the mouse. I also use a long wrist pad across the front it is about 20" long and it helps.

I know that some of the newer ergo keyboards are jointed in the middle to form a convex keyboard, I do not know if the will bind to form a concave keyboard. If it did you could arange it so that your arm could swing in in arc across the keyboard from the mouse reducing the amount of arm and body movement. If set up good your elbo would be the pivit point.

Have you ever checked with a rehab center to see if they have devices that wold help you. I know thay have access to things the general public does not.

Dallas

 

 

 

[Chris Lohman]

I've seen a few devices such as these and hope some day to build something very similar into my recliner =)

 

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/evol_chair.htm

 

The only problem I can see with this is the mouse is a touchpad on the keyboard. I can't stand touchpads. I hope to find one with a trackball on it some day.

 

One could go with a foot mouse as seen here http://www.footmouse.com/picture.htm. I can't imagine developing enough self control to drive a pointer with my ankle though.

 

I suppose one could attempt to use the TrackIT http://www.naturalpoint.com/. I can only imagine that, especially after hours of using a point/click intensive application such as IronCAD, that one would develop carpal tunnel in their neck; and what happens when you're in the middle of a click and drag and you sneeze?

 

 

[jloach]

Hi Chris

 

Any plans for making the input of bill of material data a bit more automated and/or easy?

 

Any plans for making VBA easier to use? Even a variety of easy-to-implement boilerplate utilities would be good.

 

Any plans for providing recordable macros?

 

I really think that the trackball is great, and that now it's just the repetitive cuts and pastes involved in filling in the text and bill of material fields that needs improving. A smooth link to a database would be a dream come true. We used to do that with Informix to our old Unix CAD system twelve years ago.

 

Other than that, I think that IronCad is absolutely the best computer program I've ever used. Honest!!!! Our company is creating products that we never could have done before with our resources and timeframes.

 

Thank you!

 

John

 

 

 

[Alex Khenkin]

Two mice, I'm telling you !

Another thing - try to learn to pay attention to musle tension - you'd be amazed at how tense you are, and how much less effort all these movements actually require. I am fortunate to have spent years playing a musical instrument, as well as studying marshall arts - really helps to have control over the body.

Good luck,

Alex.

 

 

[Chris Lohman]

Any plans for making the input of bill of material data a bit more automated and/or easy?

They tell me there are, but can't state when.id=red>

 

Any plans for making VBA easier to use? Even a variety of easy-to-implement boilerplate utilities would be good.

We are focusing over the next few revs on making IronCAD VERY editable/customizable/tweakable. The developers tell me that anyone that knows VB well can figure out IronCAD VBA. Of course this is from the guys that wrote it so I will pass along the need for a more user friendly "Macro System"id=red>

 

Any plans for providing recordable macros?

I have placed requests for this and have been told that it's "in the plan". That is essentially what they tell me when they intend to implement it eventually, but haven't nailed down whenid=red>

 

 

 

 

[Guest dlalonde]

How about some Ironcad-style visual tools for making macros, with a scenebrowser styled object/event list that builds up as you go, which you can mess with later when you want to change or insert something. Maybe a CATALOG for functions that we can start with and also as a place to keep the macros.

 

I'm astounded that the create bom function in the drawing system doesn't just fill in the bom automatically with everything it knows about the parts in the drawing file, and then let you uncheck rows and columns and parts that you don't need.

 

 

[Joel Parrish]

John & everyone else.

 

I've got a partial solution for your consistant type-copy-paste. We all have done enough of it!

 

I have started using an extended clipboard, like Yankee Clipper. There are many out there with multi hot key pastes and all that. Great tool, for filling in things like title blocks, material callouts, etc. that are full of common information.

 

2 cents on input devices - I used a MS Explorer 5 button trackball for about 2 years, great trackball! But my index and middle fingers just recently started feeling uncomfortable from rolling the ball all the time. So to give those fingers a break, I've switched to a MS Intellemouse Explorer 5 button mouse. I am under the impression that switching up your input device exercises your hand and may aid in preventing CTS.

 

There are many input devices out there, like gyro mice. The input device is up to you and what you feel is comfortable.

 

 

 

Joel Parrish

www.pai-design.com

[pdomenicali]

I use the Evolution trackball from Itac Systems (Mouse-Trak). It's not cheap, but extremely rugged, and has 6 easy-to-use buttons. Three are the normal ones, one is for fine/coarse motion (which I never use myself), and the other two give you "drag lock" and "double click". I like the drag lock for exactly the reason you state, of not having to hold down a button while dragging an object. The double click is convenient, but often I forget to use it.

 

But here's my biggest reason for liking the track ball with Ironcad. When right-clicking for a context menu or for the Triball, with a mouse it's very easy to produce an unintended cursor movement at the moment you click the mouse button. With a trackball, you can simply remove your finger(s) from the ball before clicking a button, thus ensuring absolutely no unintended movement. Works great for me.

 

I had used a trackball before IC, but had gone back to a mouse (as my first TB was Kensington with only two buttons). After using IC a few months, I decided to get the Evolution and haven't looked back. BTW, it hasn't at all spoiled my ease and familiarity with a standard mouse, which is what I have on my home machine. [Now, if I can just get the hang of that darn touchpad on my laptop...]

 

Regards,

Peter

[jloach]

Thanks Peter. I'll give that one a try. I really miss the middle button, since the Logitech Marble Mouse has only two buttons. Holding the two down together is supposed to give you the middle button, but it doesn't work for some reason.

 

I like the idea of the "drag-lock" too.

 

Cheers, John