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Animation-SW Parts

Animation-SW Parts

Animation-SW Parts

(OP)
Hello All,
Hey, I’ve been reading some threads on animation and have a question… Is there a way to animate a SW part (not an assembly) to show a user how it was built/modeled by another user? I think this would be really cool. I know we have the command manager and it shows you feature by feature, but feel a one mouse button click function would be a nice addition.  This way, we can kickback with a cup of coffee (or a beer…CBL…lol) and watch everyone’s bad modeling practices.

If SW doesn’t have this functionality, this would be a nice ER request, no?  

Macduff spin
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 5.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

RE: Animation-SW Parts

Go to the Tools > Options > System options > Feature manager & check mark the Arrow key navigation option.

Then when a part is rolled back, single LMB click on the rollback bar (it should turn blue), then use the up/down arrow keys to navigate.

I was told once that Solid Edge has this ability. It would be a very handy tool if you were making "How To" videos. Especially if it could show the sketches or other elements used per feature.

cheers

RE: Animation-SW Parts

Or, do the click-through yourself, but capture it as a video using Camtasia (or other software).  I think this would be much simpler than attempting to get Animator to do what you want anyway (and I don't think it will do what you asked).

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
What did you dream?  It's all right--we told you what to dream.
    --Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine

RE: Animation-SW Parts

...or go to "View/screen capture" and record the process of building the part.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 1.1
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 10-07-07)
ctopher's blog

RE: Animation-SW Parts

(OP)
Very cool CBL! A star for you. Can the playback animator be slowed down? It runs through the part pretty fast.

Macduff spin
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 5.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

RE: Animation-SW Parts

The delay can be changed;

CODE

Sub main()
    ' delay in seconds
    Const DELAY                     As Single = 1#

cheers

RE: Animation-SW Parts

(OP)
CBL, I'm changing the delay value from 1 to 10 saving it. Rerun the macro with no change. Any thoughts...?

Macduff spin
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 5.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

RE: Animation-SW Parts

It worked fine for me.

Did you also change per my last post?

cheers

RE: Animation-SW Parts

Quote (myself):


I've noticed that VBA is sometimes a bit hoky about doing boolean comparisons

Since that post I found out the reason for the above.  Many SW functions return what they call a VARIANT_BOOL.  This is different from a standard VBA boolean in that the numeric value of a VBA Boolean True is 1, but the VARIANT_BOOL True is -1.  False is 0 for both types of booleans.  Because of the way VBA evaluates things when it expects booleans, sometimes it seems to behave and sometimes not.  So basically, to revise that "tip in the second to last post", as long as we compare to the "false" value of zero then we will get proper behavior.  In the code below, we compare the numeric value of bRet to the universal numeric false zero.  the CLng function ensures that VBA looks at the numeric value of bRet.

CODE

        ' only pause if we have successfully rolled back
        If CLng(bRet) <> 0 Then
            sNow = Timer
            While sNow + DELAY > Timer
                ' need to allow SW to refresh screen
                DoEvents
            Wend
        End If

CBL, you know me too well.  big smile

RE: Animation-SW Parts

Quote (handleman):

Since that post I found out the reason for the above.  Many SW functions return what they call a VARIANT_BOOL.  This is different from a standard VBA boolean in that the numeric value of a VBA Boolean True is 1, but the VARIANT_BOOL True is -1.  False is 0 for both types of booleans.  Because of the way VBA evaluates things when it expects booleans, sometimes it seems to behave and sometimes not.  So basically, to revise that "tip in the second to last post", as long as we compare to the "false" value of zero then we will get proper behavior.  In the code below, we compare the numeric value of bRet to the universal numeric false zero.  the CLng function ensures that VBA looks at the numeric value of bRet.

Ummm, yeah ... that's exactly what I was thinking. lookaround

cheers

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