×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Animating SheetMetal

Animating SheetMetal

Animating SheetMetal

(OP)
Has anyone found a way to make an animation of a sheetmetal part opening and closing? thanks

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP1.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

RE: Animating SheetMetal

Do you mean an animation of flattening & unflattening the part?


Making the best use of this Forum.  FAQ559-716
How to get answers to your SW questions.  FAQ559-1091
Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of.  FAQ559-520

RE: Animating SheetMetal

(OP)
yes, sorry that is what I meant ... it's Friday

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP1.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

RE: Animating SheetMetal

OK ... quick answer is yes ... using the Screen Capture
I just did a test, but using Windows Media Player, it played the AVI so fast you could hardly see it.

I remember a year or more back someone posted a short video of a sheet metal part in  a post here, but no idea what it was about, so cannot search.

Hopefully someone else may remember or know of a better way to do what you want.


Making the best use of this Forum.  FAQ559-716
How to get answers to your SW questions.  FAQ559-1091
Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of.  FAQ559-520

RE: Animating SheetMetal

(OP)
I did the same and can not slow it down.
I thought I have seen it before also, but wasn't sure.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP1.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

RE: Animating SheetMetal

I've had success in the past by taking screen captures of the various stages of forming, turning them into GIFs, then used a freeware (from MicroSoft I think) to convert the GIFs into an animated GIF.  It took some time, but it worked.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Animating SheetMetal

Mike J Wilson's site had some animations that could have helped, but it seems his site was hijacked by Autodesk:

http://www.mikejwilson.com/

If it is a simple part, then you can "Save as JPEG".  But if it is an assembly, such as the sheetmetal between the die and punch being formed, then make configurations of the different degrees of the bend stages, and save each configuration as a jpeg.

Flores

RE: Animating SheetMetal

Hmmm ... methinks Mike will not be impressed


Making the best use of this Forum.  FAQ559-716
How to get answers to your SW questions.  FAQ559-1091
Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of.  FAQ559-520

RE: Animating SheetMetal

There is a better way to do this.  Create a design table to drive the bend angles, arranged sequentially by name so that they will sort in the order you want the part to bend in the animation.  The bend angles should change by a small increment in each configuration so that the animation comes out smooth.  Then, turn on screen capture and use a macro to iterate through all the configurations.  Then just turn off screen capture once the forming is done.  By using a macro you can have many configurations but you don't have to manually switch from one to the next.

There is an example of rebuilding configurations in the api help.  I added a pause loop to also slow down the bending.  You can find the best combination of bend angle change per configuration / PauseTime to get a smooth animation at the desired file size.  Change PauseTime to suit your taste.  Paste this into a new macro and you can create these animations in 5 minutes with no hassle

Enjoy...
_______________________________________________________

Option Explicit

Sub main()
    Dim swApp                   As SldWorks.SldWorks
    Dim swModel                 As SldWorks.ModelDoc2
    Dim vConfNameArr            As Variant
    Dim sConfigName             As String
    Dim i                       As Long
    Dim bShowConfig             As Boolean
    Dim bRebuild                As Boolean
 
    Dim StartTime, PauseTime As Single
    PauseTime = 0.5
    
    Set swApp = CreateObject("SldWorks.Application")
    Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc

    vConfNameArr = swModel.GetConfigurationNames

    For i = 0 To UBound(vConfNameArr)
        sConfigName = vConfNameArr(i)
        bShowConfig = swModel.ShowConfiguration2(sConfigName)
        bRebuild = swModel.ForceRebuild3(False)
                
        StartTime = Timer    ' Set start time.
        Do While Timer < StartTime + PauseTime
            DoEvents    ' Yield to other processes.
        Loop
    Next i

End Sub

RE: Animating SheetMetal

(OP)
Thanks guys.
CBL, I will check it out. I think I had an old version before. I will update it.
Stoker, thanks I'll try it.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP1.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

RE: Animating SheetMetal

If you create an Unfold of all the bends & then create an individual Fold for each bend, you can then roll back to the Unfold & do a screen capture AVI while rolling forward through the Folds in sequence.


Making the best use of this Forum.  FAQ559-716
How to get answers to your SW questions.  FAQ559-1091
Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of.  FAQ559-520

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources