SW Animator Basics

[mholland]

Hello All,

I'm really finding it difficult to do what I expect is a simple thing in solidworks animator. I'm trying to animate a series of tunnel segments connecting to a complete tunnel section, rather like the animation found on the homepage of this website:

http://www.sofrasar.fr/products.php?section=dv3&realm=tunnel&product=brochage

I'd like three segments in total to move on to the assembly. So for example at time0 segment1 is offset 200 from the face of the complete cylinder, and at time5 the segment and the cylinder are concentric. Then segment 2 follows the same pattern although this may be offset 400 for example. Can anyone tell me how this simple animation can be acheived because I'm starting to feel a bit thick

Regards

 

[Eltron]

You can't control concentric mates in Animator. The only mates that you have access to in the Animator interface are Distance and Angle mates. If all you want is to animate a view collapsing this can be done without Animator in the Configuration Manager. However, if you would like a rendered image you will need to use Animator.

I would try to control the motion by varying the spacing with distance mates. If you would like your parts to stray from being concentric and return to concentricity, I would use distance mates on their planes or faces to get them aligned properly. In the Animator pane just move your time key and adjust any/all of the distance mates to get the look you're after.

Hope that helps.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

 

[Theophilus]

Simple animations using Animator are often quite difficult since Animator is a bit buggy and you have to fight that even for simple operations.

Do you need the floating motion of those blocks (instead of direct assembly motion)? If not, I'd recommend animating an exploded view. Animator has a wizard for this (if I'm remembering this correctly) you can use. Instead of showing the explosion, you can show the collapse of the assembly. Check it out in the Animator tutorials (in SW) and in Help.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.