3D Mouse Support
Originally posted in the forums:
I am aware that this has been asked before, but I have not found an adequate answer.
I have always disliked the methods used by Illustrator for pan and zoom functions.
I have been using a program called X-Mouse Button Control to remap the functions of the mouse wheel and middle click to pan and zoom operations. For panning, this works well: Middle click to pan. In X-Mouse, the middle click is replaced with a macro that will hold the space key, and simulate a click/hold of the left mouse button. This allows panning in a way that is similar to many other programs I use daily.
The zoom, however, is a bit more difficult. By remapping the mouse-wheel-up/mouse-wheel-down to include holding the 'alt' key, I can zoom in and out. The issue appears when I hover over the Transform dimensions and/or position of an object. Since the 'alt' key is held, it copies the selected object at each click of the wheel. While this can make for some very interesting geometric designs, it is no quite what I'm after.
I've recently acquired a 3Dconnexion Space Navigator for AutoCAD work. It has improved my workflow tremendously in AutoCAD.
I reached out to 3Dconnexion about support for Illustrator, and they placed the ball squarely in your court, Adobe!
What say ye? Can we get simple Pan/Zoom control for our 3D devices?
/end rant
Thanks for listening.

Illustrator now supports panning with the middle-click held. Also you can toggle Zoom with Mouse Wheel option in Preferences > General. No need to remap anything for having these now.
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MM, welcome to UserVoice.
As the status now said, you can now toggle the option to have zoom with the mouse wheel. It took the team long enough to do that, I agree.
Sure, if a topic is named '3D Mouse Support' instead of 'Make mouse wheel zoom' it brings less voters :) Anyway, now it’s done, hooray, use it!As for having Zoom icon as a separate tool... Sure it will stay. There are thousand of users who uses it. Ain’t broken — don’t fix it. They are used to this button.
Please comment and vote for other requests you find useful to have, review bug reports. It helps a ton to prioritize efforts.
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MM commented
I could not believe there was a zoom icon in a 2022 subscription software called Illustrator. How quaint! Seriously, bring the program into the 21st century, please. Design time comes at a premium and support for a separate navigation tool on the left hand such as the spacemouse with the regular mouse on the right hand for command selection is a real time saver and avoids carpal tunnel by avoiding 60% of clicks and scrolls for navigation. It can't be that hard to create an interface like that. Autodesk has adopted it for good reason. Video editing has their own hardware for color selection etc. Get on the wagon & be nice to us users. We want to be efficient and enjoy life.
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Matt commented
This would be outstanding! Just simple pan/zoom functionality is all that would be needed and would help increase my productivity and workflow tremendously.