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Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

(OP)
I'm looking for some suggestions to help animate a complete machine consisting of 1500 parts. All none moving parts are already fixed, assemblies that do not move have been changed to single parts. There are a total of 150 -200 left that have to driven. Which can be done thru a number of differnet methods. They all seem to work so far. I have done like 30 -40 animation in the past and have applied all the tricks from the then. However,I'm still up against a wall with two problems- RealView feature doesn't stay applied and curvature during set-up is non existent, so set-up has been difficult. The screen rendering and rebuild times are killer so I'm looking for any help I can get. I'm running AMD 4200 X2, 2gb ram 150 gbSATA with FX 1500.  SW2007 SP0

windowpain

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

I have the exact same issue with an assembly consisting of about 1700 components.  I just recently lost the ability to free-drag any of my (machine) motions within the assembly after a nasty crash.  I'm only at about 15 seconds worth of animation and have another 110 seconds to go.  Do you know of any good resources of tips / tricks for animating large assemblies?  I wish I could offer more advice, but I'm in the same boat.

Good luck!

M.B. Price CSWP
www.assembly-testww.com
Automated Assembly & Test Systems

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

I've just been through a lot of this (and am still amidst it) with Animator 2007.

Phadreus, did you reorder anything in your assembly tree?  Or use folders?  I did that and instantly corrupted my assembly (in 2007) when it locked all moving parts in place.  Had to start over (before SP 1).  So don't do that.

Regarding the other issues, you'll probably have to consider using the PhotoWorks properties alone.  The problem with that is that you cannot gradually hide or show (fade in/out) any parts when using PhotoWorks.  However, you can get and keep good textures during the animation.

Dual-cores/chips are great for rendering animation, since you'll get to use all of your processor power (multi-threaded) and it really knocks the render time down substantially.  I think you'll need more RAM.  I had 2GB and had to get a third GB of RAM last week, plus enable the /3GB switch.  All is good now (and my assemblies only have ~750 parts with ~500 parts moving around).

Animator is not stable.  I often don't let it "rebuild" when I save and just hope the limit-mated stuff stays where I last put it (floats around when I rebuild--I have no idea why--and screws up key point locations when that happens).

To get around complex motion problems, I do quick hide/shows for similar parts/assemblies.  So if a part needs to pivot down and then unfold something like a hinge, I show the part that does the pivot while the hinging part is pre-mated in space.  The pre-mated hinging part is then quickly shown while the first hinging part is hidden.  I can then unhinge the pre-mated part without the first set of parts moving as a result.  I can then hide all that and show a third set of parts that move along a different axis of motion, with the hinging relationships fixed with one another.  (Have to pin down all unnecessary motion or things fall apart.)

Frustrating, but you can make it work.  I've got about four of eight such complex animations under my belt.  Tough part is the rest are due next week and I don't have time after fighting with the SP 0 bugs.  Ug.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Hi, we had similar problems, particularly with crashes, lock ups and the amount of time taken to render. One solution that we used, was to split up the animation into segments and then join the avi file together afterwards. This had a couple of advantages. It meant that if the machine crashed, we only lost 5 seconds worth of animation instead of 20/30. Also, you can load the same files on more than one machine and split the work up.

Hope this helps.

BW

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

(OP)
thanks for all your input. It seems I'm no the only one hit up against Animator issues. I can offer a few tips to help with some of the problems.
1) When structuring the assembly change as many assemblies as possible, that do not move to solid parts, exterior surfaces only.
2) Feature tree structure is very critical.
---Try to assembly items in the tree based on their materials, this saves rebuild and render times.
---Do not use folders to group parts or mates.
---Do not move items in the tree once placed.
---Obviously label all mates that drive motion.
3) On large project I create a story board prior to help organize the animation, it takes little more time but really helps.
Additionally, when rendering through Photoworks at home, I use a AMD X2 - 4800, 4 GB Ram, Dual SLI NVIdia 7800 gt cards, with 2-160 gb SATA, and  100 gb Speed disc for temp files with XP64. And write to the  second hard drive that is not running XP or Solidworks. This machine is considerably faster that the PC at work, which I mentioned before.

I have done other projects and divided the animation into several short clips, then done post production editing to assemble the finished product. But I don't that option on this project which is between 4-5 minutes in length. This is the first of two, with second being approx 10 minutes long, and a Oct 20 deadline.

FYI - From Solidworks, for their large demos and advertising, they do not use Solidworks Animator for their animation. They export everything and use RenderMan or Studio Max both specific animation programs.

WP

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Hi WP,

4-5 mins...thats a lot of rendering. Good luck.

Best wishes

BW

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

(OP)
Thanks. I'll just keep hacing away at it.

WP

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

I've fought animator for some time now as well.  I've even been lucky enough to create a motion with one of my assemblies that animator cannot even calculate.  Try that one in your spare time...However, if you have COSMOS Motion you can do non-rendered animations fairly quick.  You have limited visual controls, but the motion will be calculated acurately.  And you can export your results to FEA.

Dan

www.eltronresearch.com

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Windowpain, I think those tips are excellent.

I've been saving "static" assemblies--or assemblies that move as a simple block--as part files and bringing them into the top-level assembly--really saves headaches (similar to what you mentioned with only exterior faces).

If you have complex motion to generate, you can create a part in your assembly that's nothing more than a surface.  Create a coincident mate (with a point or something) from your part to that surface to guide motion in ways Animator won't normally deal with.  With care, you can get what you need.

Animator is very limited.  I'd like a feature that allows us to create a mirror line, across which selected points can be mirrored in "time"--saves all the headache of reversing motion and should be a piece of cake to make function.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

I followed pretty much all of the advice from above and have to say it was invaluable.  I am now half way through my animation and things are running pretty smoothly.  Overall, I think the Animator program within SW is "flakey" to say the least.  I plan to use Camtasia to compile the multiple short AVI's into one long continuous AVI with some added text and pointer features to "jazz" things up a bit.  I am using this project in one of our sales demos and so far, everyone seems impressed with the results.  This area of SW seems to have lots of potential.

If a guy wanted to do animation more often with a little more horsepower, what animation specific programs should one consider?  I am currently looking at some Autodesk animation products (ironic huh?), but haven’t gotten a chance to try out any demos yet.  Any suggestions?

Thanks all for the valuable input, I was pretty much dead in the water prior to receiving all this information.

Cheers,

M.B. Price CSWP
www.assembly-testww.com
Automated Assembly & Test Systems

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

(OP)
Phadreus, glad to hear this has helped. I think SW Animator is fine for what is was designed to do, however it sounds to me, we're all just pressing it past its capabilities. If you looking for more heavy duty animations program try Maya, 3D StudioMax, or RenderMan. All are real good programs, but all come with a hefty price tag - $4k to $12k. I'm trying to get then to get a single seat here if we're going to continue with the animations. As for assemble of the clips, I'm using Adobe Premiere to edit, add effects, text and change to wide screen format for sales presentation and show demos.

WP

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Windowpain has named all of the main players that Ican think of. There is a freebie that I've downloaded but not had time to try. It's called blender and is available from http://www.blender.org/

Be interested to find out if it's any good!

BW

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

I have done some fairly complicated real time animation through design table.

1.    Make two configurations with extreme positions.
2.    Insert design table and fill the mate distances for regular intervals. E.g. for every 5°
3.    Open SWX Animator-Screen Capture-Turn On SC and click each configuration.
 I received a macro from this forum to run the configuration automatically one after the other and if you wish to have it please let me know.

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

Cool trick--does it work with PhotoWorks?  (I wouldn't think this would do more than capturing what's on the screen at the time--non-rendered.)

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Solidworks Animation of large Assembly

This is a small and quick simulation I did to inquire about the capabilities of our transfer system.

http://quick.dropfiles.net/902020

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