×
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 an exploded view?

Animating an exploded view?

Animating an exploded view?

(OP)
Is it possible to save an animated exploding/collapsing assembly as a GIF file so that it can be used on a website?

RE: Animating an exploded view?

Not with standard SW tools. You could use the Rx tool, or Animator add-in, to save as an AVI then use a 3rd party convertor.

3rd party screen capture software exists for AVI and Flash, but I've not seen one for GIF ... but then I've not been looking for one.

cheers

RE: Animating an exploded view?

(OP)
Hey CorBlimeyLimey!

What is Rx tool?

RE: Animating an exploded view?

It is a diagnostic and "Problem Capture" tool.

Start > All Programs > SolidWorks > SolidWorks Tools > SolidWorks Rx

cheers

RE: Animating an exploded view?

(OP)
CorBlimeyLimey, thanks for the help. I am such a novice when it comes to animation. Could you tell me what I would do. I run Rx, but then in order to save the file, I would need to enter a description of the "problem", and enter my e-mail address. Do I need to do this part (I don't have a problem w/ Solidworks) or do I use the 3rd party screen capture software once the recording begins?

RE: Animating an exploded view?

Yes you need to fill out that information, but don't worry it does not send anything automatically. A zipped package will be created and stored in My Documents/SW Log Files. The movie file can be extracted from there.

A simpler way would be to use Cam Studio from http://www.camstudio.org/ or something similar, but you will have to convert the result to GIF.

cheers

RE: Animating an exploded view?

Or--use third party software to convert your normal animation (like AVI format) back into animated GIF software.  You can find quite a lot of freeware out there that may be able to do what you need.

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

RE: Animating an exploded view?

(OP)
Thanks for your help.

I actually used Mr. Captor to create an AVI file. But then when I sent the file to my client, Media Player won't play the video because it has a problem loading codec! I was able to play it no problem on my laptop, but not on my wife's (same problem)

So I used Video Inspector to see what codec was needed. Anyways, after I did all that, it still doesn't work! Why does it seem like nothing is ever easy?

So, then I decided to convert the avi to wmv, so I had to download more software to do that. The end result is a very poor looking animation. The quality of the video is seriously degraded. Is there a better way to do it?

RE: Animating an exploded view?

Open your AVI in Windows Movie Maker--it's built in to Windows XP Pro (and probably XP Home).  In that, you can "import" your AVI file and export it into differing compression rates, frame rates, frame sizes, etc.  Very nice (for once) for a Windows freebie.  I use it quite frequently, since I output my rendered animations with no compression (45 second animations get as huge as 1GB).  To compress for web viewing, I use WMM to get what I need for a given connection speed or download size.  Very nice.

Here's an example:
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com/internet/G2-38-Tommy-Gate.wmv

By the way, I've found that the WMV format is well-compressed for the quality.  It's the best compromise I've been able to find for my work.

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

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