Can this Animation to be done ? 2

[jacek0841]

Imagine you have a Horizontal Cylinder - Rod fully collapsed and a Roller 2" in front of the rod.

Now you extend the rod (Linear Motor) and when the Rod comes with contact with The Roller the Rod pushes the Roller.

 

[SilasH]

I would say yes, but probably with the usage of dummy parts. Use distance mates to expand the cylinder, which will need to be modeled as at least two parts to show the expansion. Use an angle mate combined with a distance mate to make the ball roll. Solidworks often has difficulties traveling through more than 180 degrees of angle, so you might need to throw in a gear mate to a dummy ball of larger diameter (hidden) to cause the small ball to roll more than 180 degrees. For the gear mate, you won't be able to select the surface, but you can select a sketch arc. This is all my best guess, haven't actually tried.

 

[JMirisola]

Create a mate between the rod and the roller (tangent?), then supress it. Start your animation with the rod retracted. Move the timeline and unsupress the mate. Make sure that your interpolation is set to snap. At that point, you should be able to simply move the rod to its ending state and the roller with travel with it.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[Theophilus]

Another way to do this is to fudge things a bit--but this more reliably works (in my experience) with such things as the most sketchy Animator module.

Animate the path of your cylinder extension first, without regard for the pushed object. Get the time right. Go back in time to the point where contact would be made with the pushed object and then set up a motion for that object. The end time should coincide for the cylinder and pushed object.

I have all sorts of things happen when attempting to edit a mate along the way in animations--maybe because I'm always setting up complicated things that Animator wasn't meant to handle (I don't know). But if the animation is really the final output, precision isn't usually as important as communication. And you can communicate fairly precisely even with Animator. So if the above-mentioned ideas don't work for you, try mine. It's simple and it will work--but it's not very precise.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[jacek0841]

...probably with the usage of dummy parts.

... Solidworks often has difficulties traveling through more than 180 degrees of angle, so you might need to throw in ... a dummy

Both remarks very valid - just discovered that when trying to animate rotation of more than 180 deg the thing rotates the other way around, that is it takes the shortes route (the smaller angle), not the one rotated manually during creation of the animation ... :-( Problem solved by adding a dummy rake and driving the rake not rotating the pinion ...

No cigar yet, but it looks like eventually I am gonna get to the succesfull end ...

 

[jacek0841]

Happy to report that after the better part of the day I finally got what I wanted - CIGAR !!

Done by Theofilus method - will try other's suggestions tomorrow.

Thank you everybody.

 

[jacek0841]

Well, now boss wants something even more complicated - and to do this I need to Suppress some Mates at certain time and at the same time Unsupress some other Mates.

Could this be done ??

 

[jacek0841]

JMirisola

... Move the timeline and unsupress the mate...

How do you do that ? Please be descriptive, that's my first animation ...

... Make sure that your interpolation is set to snap.

What's that ??

 

[JMirisola]

When you create the animation, there is a timeline that is created as well. It starts at 00:00. Have the mate supressed. Grab the timeline and move it however many seconds forward you want. In the animator feature tree, unsupress the mate. A diamond will be created on the time line horizontally across from the mate. Right click on it, select 'interpolation' then snap.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[jacek0841]

... In the animator feature tree, unsupress the mate.

Obviously I am doing something wrong - there is only one mate in the animator feature tree, while about 20 mates in the Feature mgr tree :-( :-(

 

[JMirisola]

The animator feature tree should contain all the features and mates shown in your SW feature manager.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[jacek0841]

The animator feature tree should contain all the features and mates shown in your SW feature manager.

Hmm ... in the Animator Tutorial (Oil_Pump) there are 13 mates in SW Feature Manager and only 5 in the Animator tree ...

 

[JMirisola]

My bad. You'll only have mates that control location via measurement (distance, angle). Locking mates (coincident, concentric, etc) won't be shown.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[JMirisola]

To accomplish your initial goal (the one in your first post), you'd need to have a distance mate that would give you a 0 gap between them. You'd have it supressed until the rod makes contact and then unsupress it.
You say that your boss wants something more complicated. Can you be more specific?

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[jacek0841]

JMirisola

... You'll only have mates that control location via measurement (distance, angle). ...

Very usefull hint - insted of Parallel I used Angle=0, which showes up in the Animation tree and hopefuly at one point I can suppress it.

Let see if I could use Distance=0 instead of Coincident

 

[jacek0841]

I am trying to go thru animation tutorial (SW2007) but I think it has some errors in it (for example paragraph Basic Motion Animation - pt. 1 and 11 should not be there or you will not get exactly what's shown in pt. 12 Show me). For some uneplained reason the shaft pops out at around 6 sec of the time ...

Anyway, my problem now is - how to Suppress and Un-supress certain Mates at a given time ?? I managed to get certain mates into Animation Manager (for example by replacing Parallel [which would not show up] by Angle=0 [which does show up]) but how to manipulate them in time ??

 

[JMirisola]

You can suppress and unsuppress in the same manner as any other view. If you want the mate to start off suppressed, RMB on it and select suppress. Move the timeline to where you want it unsuppressed, RMB, select unsuppress.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[Theophilus]

It still sounds like you're expecting Animator to behave. It won't. This is why I try to keep things as simple as possible in my animations.

I think Jeff (the other Jeff) already answered your latest question. If you can see the mates within your Animator window, you can suppress or unsuppress them in time.

Create a mate between the rod and the roller (tangent?), then supress it. Start your animation with the rod retracted. Move the timeline and unsupress the mate. Make sure that your interpolation is set to snap. At that point, you should be able to simply move the rod to its ending state and the roller with travel with it.

Does that work?



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[jacek0841]

Sorry, but either I am a dummy or I do not understand the explanations.

Forget about the cylider and roller - things are more coplex now.

As I said earlier, thanks to a tip, I managed to make some Mates visible in the Animator tree (replacing Parallel by Angle=0 etc., etc.,) as explaned earlier.

Now, what I would like to know is:

How to Suppress and unsupress those Animator tree mates at certain times.

Time1 (start) to Time2 Angle1 is unsupressed Angle2 supressed.
Time2 Angle1 gets Suppressed
Time3 Angle2 gets Unsupressed.
Time3 to Time 4 Angle2 Unsupressed.
....

As you can see I could even add same deley (say 0.5 sec) between Time 2 and Time 3 so the system would not get confused - that is not to get Angle1 Suppressed and Angle2 Unsupressed at the same time (if both are unsupressed at the same time then the system is overdefined).

I tried to copy and place the diamonds at proper (I think) time locations, then suppres the diamonds (make them gray). Does not work.

If I manually suppress the mate in the Main Mgr tree at Time2 then the things that worked perfectly (movement along certain path) get messed up, certain diamonds that were blue turn red and with replay I get the end of the animation O.K. but the beginning (that worked O.K.) is totally messed up (the other part will not start were it should).

To repeat the question:

How to Suppress and unsupress those Animator tree mates at certain times.
Time1 (start) to Time2 Angle1 is unsupressed, Angle2 suppressed.
Time2 Angle1 gets Suppressed
Time3 Angle2 gets Unsupressed.
Time3 to Time 4 Angle2 Unsupressed.

If you could - please treat me like a dummy, that is reply:

1) click this
2) right click that and chnge the color to ...

etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[JMirisola]

Okay...but I want a dozen Krispy Kremes.

With your animation at the beginning:
1. Right click on Angle1 and make sure it is unsuppressed.
2. Right click on Angle2 and suppress it.
3. There is a vertical time-line bar that you can click and drag. Move it x.x seconds to time1 and release.
4. Right click on Angle1 and select suppress.
5. Move time-line to time2.
6. Right click on Angle2 and select unsuppress.

Angle1 should remain suppressed until you unsuppress it and Angle2 should remain unsuppressed.


Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog