As title really. Getting on in years, but if anything I’m doing more 3D modelling work now than before. Need a comfortable long-term solution.
Any recommendations?
Vertical mouse seems to cause more fatigue to the whole hand (thumb and wrist) wereas trackballs need only your fingers. Still, trackballs have to be cleaned and this may be time consuming and cause extra wrist discomfort. Neither seems to prevail, in particular when you’re not among the youngest. Try both and decide which is better for you.
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I use the MX ergo trackball and it has been a game changer. definitely improved my wrist happiness.
I had two trackballs but not for long as they broke. They were not optical though as it was some time ago.
Yeah, this one is working well for me, I do need to clean it about once a week, with 40+ hours/week of heavy use.
No problems so far after about 18 months of use.
do you not find the constant thumb-action to be tiring on the thumb?
I recently got a vertical mouse more or less by accident. The arm and back pain i have had for the last 4 years which i thought came from carrying toddlers disappeared over night.
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One thing that has helped me very much … (wheeze) … is to every day stir Knox® (Unflavored) Gelatin into a glass of water and drink it down.
This is a very-pure source of the same stuff that “protects the various bones in your body from their neighbors.”
I notice no difference. The constant tension of holding the mouse laterally seems to cause more pain than the dynamic motion of using the thumb. It’s a low pressure application, you barely have to push at all on the ball to get it moving.
You also don’t need to hold the mouse especially steady when clicking, since clicking on a trackball doesn’t move the cursor. When doing precise pixel level selections, I was often frustrated when the mouse moved ever so slightly while clicking. Now I can position my cursor precisely with the ball, then take my thumb off and click without the possibility of the cursor moving.
Wacom tablet. All issues I had with my wrist and fingers disappeared years and years and years ago. Colleagues of mine had severe RSI in both their wrists, and switching to a Wacom helped the RSI into complete remission.
I also switched to a standing desk a year ago (an Uplift electrical one) and I swear: if I had known how beneficial it would be for my overall health and back, I would have done it a decade ago.
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Switched to vertical mouse after starting to feel Carpal tunnel syndrome, and it really helped in just a few days. It takes a bit of time to get used to it, I wasn’t as accurate with that mourse for a couple of weeks, but after some time, you won’t really notice a difference.
The only problem is that I start to feel a different type of pain, more like tendinitis in my thumb and index finger after a few months of use, so it’s not the perfect solution either. I think it’s important to find a mouse that supports your grip type (fingertip, claw, palm…).
Like with a standing desk, I think the best is probably to switch from time to time between mice and tablet so that your hand doesn’t get stuck in the same position for too long.
I’m not arthritic but I research/ take notes a lot, so am fanatical about protecting both wrists, arms, shoulders from over-clicking tension and stress ache.
For reference, I model/ sculpt (ZBrush)/ rig/ animate/ node. Blender’s hotkey-based “forced ambidextrous” style suits me fine.
I’ve tried 2 popular track balls and vertical mouse, doesn’t work for me, mainly because I prefer light-touch light weight small precision mouse.
I play piano, I love using any finger other than index. My pet theory = overused index finger, underused middle, thumb, ring fingers are slowly but surely killing everyone’s nerves/ muscles from palms to neck.
For years now I’ve settled into this setup: Wacom pro tablet, Logitech G900 gaming mouse, Space navigator 3D mouse, and a 3cm height elbow gel sponge wrist pad.
My right hand alternates between tablet pen and G900 mouse depending on tasks.
My left hand use space navigator mouse (and keyboard hotkeys).
I customize the “pop-up pies” of Wacom and Space mouse to the hilt.
It’s a proven fact, that wireless mouse reduces stress, as tethered cables add to mouse’s push-pull weight. This is why pro gamers will still use wireless mouse, which sacrifices split milliseconds wireless lag to gain that extra physical speediness.
I went through many light weight mouse, settled for G900 because: wireless, light weight, many buttons that allows 4 different fingers input, and ambidextrous (switching to left hand use is intuitive). If you’re fine with heavier/ bigger mouse, you have 10 times more options in the same precision programmable mouse category.
So in short, go light wireless gaming mouse + tablet.
Hope you find your solution.
I’ve considered a tablet many times over the years, and even briefly owned a couple, but I always ended up returning them because they just … never clicked. I only used them for drawing though, but they just always felt awkward. Plus they take up a lot of space.
My last attempt was with a Huion tablet with embedded screen so that I could at least see what I was ‘drawing’ but that didn’t seem to help much.
I’m sure it would be great for sculpting, but I tend to do hard-surface modelling so I’m dragging vertices and loop cuts, not sure a tablet is anywhere near accurate enough to handle that.
I’ve heavily considered getting a space mouse compact. Been looking on ebay for a bargain.
Right, this can be a problem with special regard to Loopcut. But in non-graphics use high precision is not required.
Anything under $190 is okay I think. My space mouse is more than a decade old, bought it for Sketchup, still working with latest driver in Blender and ZBrush.
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