If you have a connected dial and/or button box that uses the X Input Extension, spock will recognize and use it. Most (if not all) dial/button boxes sold for use with SGI hardware use this extension. There's also a ``fake dial box'' available under the Graphics menu, which may be useful even if you have a real one (§6.11.5).
Rather than defining a function for each button, requiring users to learn yet another layout, spock chooses to have the button box completely customizable in the following manner: quite simply, buttons invoke spock macros. The first defined macro is assigned to button 0, the second to button 1, and so on. If you wish to emulate some other button layout, simply create the appropriate macros, in order, and you'll be set. For details on creating macros, see §6.10.
Spock does define a default binding for the dials, but the binding can be changed via the ``Customize Dial Box'' option of the Graphics Menu. If you do not see this menu, it means that spock was unable to find your dial box. The default layout is intuitive if your dial box consists of two columns of four buttons. The left column controls translations, while the right column controls rotations. The table below shows the default bindings. Note that the dial sensitivity is also affected by the mouse sensitivity value set in the Control Panel under the ``File'' menu (§ 6.1.8).
| Default Dial Bindings | |
| Dial 6: Scale | Dial 7: Slab thickness |
| Dial 4: Z translation | Dial 5: Z rotation |
| Dial 2: Y translation | Dial 3: Y rotation |
| Dial 0: X translation | Dial 1: X rotation |