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Posts Tagged ‘motion’

This is a very short post with the only intention of showing you a little video where I’m driving movement in an animation using only an angle mate. The video was also made made using SolidWorks 2010 Motion Manager and it’s the same model of the scissors that  I used before, but  it kind of didn’t fit well with the other two examples, so I decided to make a separate video about it. There’s also a little something on changing views during the animation. Hope you find it useful!

Hey everyone!  I know it’s been almost a month since the last time I blogged.  I also know quite a few of you still visit. Thank you!  Contrary to what the rumors may say, I’m still alive and this blog is still active, just not as active as before.  I’m sorry! Truth is this summer – this whole year – hasn’t been exactly one of the best ones for me and I’ve been seriously tied up with family responsibilities and other mundane activities. Bo-ring… I know.  Precisely for that reason I considered having a friend of mine as a guest blogger every now and then, just to keep the ball rolling during those times when I can’t come up with something to write about or when I just can’t find the time to do it, but he’s not convinced this is something he may want to do.  I guess I haven’t nagged enough.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I’ve been reading the new book Creating Animations with SolidWorks and I’m already halfway through it.  At the risk of sounding like a bad commercial, I must say that this book is really worth the time and effort.  It is very easy to read, straight forward, and will quickly provide you with the tools you need to create really cool animations without complicating your life.  

I think one of the most important things I’ve gotten from this book so far is the understanding of what making an animation in SolidWorks is really about. You see, I started the process backwards, attempting to understand SolidWorks Motion first, before learning about animation, and I was confused because all three kinds of motion studies use the same interface: the Motion Manager, although they are definitely not the same thing . This book has helped me finally understand why many of my previous attempts failed, and find different ways to get the movement right.

I’ve learned that sometimes you may get the results you need by dragging parts, sometimes you may drive the movement using distance or angle mates and yet some other times you may use one or several motors to accomplish the same.  And you can combine these elements too! Reading chapter seven I learned how to apply motors, how to turn them on and off throughout the timeline, reverse their direction, change their speed,  and change the interpolation mode to affect the way they operate, thus ultimately changing the way the whole animation looks like. I also tried one kind of motor I hadn’t tried before in an animation: an interpolated motor, driven by a tabulated set of values. This sort of motor is pretty cool, because it’s easier than trying to keep track of several key points throughout the animation, especially if you have other motors that you are trying to synchronize.

Anyway,  I put something together really quickly, trying to answer the second question from the same reader of the chain. He wanted to know how to animate screws so it looks like they are actually being screwed or unscrewed during the animation of an assembly exploding or collapsing. I tried two different things, based on examples I found in the book.  If you want to know more, I recommend you get a copy of the book Creating Animations with SolidWorks from your local VAR or the SolidWorks online store.

For the first method, I created a manual animation of the explosion of a pair of scissors. By manual I mean that I didn’t use the Animation Wizard, but dragged and positioned the components myself, instead.  Notice that, in order to do this I had to suppress a few of the mates in the assembly or else the components wouldn’t budge at all.  For the second method, I used the Animation Wizard to create an animation of the assembly explosion first and then tweaked the animation a bit.  In both cases, the rotation of the screw was achieved by using a screw mate. Please, forgive me because these two animations are extremely rough. I didn’t pay too much attention to details and views, etc., so they may not look as nice as they could had I spent a little more time working on them. Anyway, to watch the video simply click on the image below.

I originally posted this in my Spanish blog as a response to a question I got via email from a reader who was trying to produce a rendered animation and wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. I usually try not to repeat posts in both blogs, but then I thought that someone else could benefit from this same information on this other side of the language barrier, so here it goes.

My reader complained that he would render an image using PhotoWorks only to have it go back to it’s original  state as soon as he tried to rotate it or move it. So, how could an animation be created if this kept happening? I’m not exactly sure how he was trying to capture the animation, but truth is that a rendered animation can be done easily by combining PhotoWorks and SolidWorks MotionManager.

First of all, you need to have PhotoWorks add-in loaded. If you don’t, go to Tools, Add-ins and select PhotoWorks  from the list of available applications. Once you have it loaded, proceed to apply appearances, scenery, lights and/or decals to your model using the options available in PhotoWorks. I won’t go into detail here, since I’m assuming you know how to do this.

As a quick example, let’s say I have this model of a pair of scissors. I’ve applied a few appearances and a scenery. Nothing complicated. I tried to keep it simple to minimize the amount of rendering time. Plus, the image you see here is not rendered yet.

Once you’re satisfied with your rendering options (try rendering the image to check), you can proceed to create the animation. Click on the tab that reads Motion Study 1 at the bottom left of the window to use MotionManager. For this example, I used the Animation Wizard to create a simple animation of the model rotating around it’s Y axis. Of course, you can do any other sort of more complicated animations if you wish. This is just a quick example.  If you are not familiar with SolidWorks MotionManager and you’re not sure what to do, just follow along the steps. First, click on the Animation Wizard button (the one that looks like a little camera). A dialog window will open prompting you to select the kind of animation you wish to create. Since we don’t have any exploded views of the model, the option of rotating the model is the only one available and is pre-selected. Click Next.

Another dialog window will open and you will be prompted to select the axis of rotation and number of revolutions. I selected the Y axis and  decided five revolutions would be more than enough. Click Next.

A third window will open, prompting you to enter a duration for the animation in seconds and a start time. I decided ten seconds was all the time I wanted my animation to last and it would begin at zero seconds. Click Finish to create the keys for the animation and then calculate to see it on the screen. You should be seeing the model rotate five times around it’s Y axis in ten seconds.

Once all the steps for the animation are ready, we can produce the rendered animation, which was the original goal. This animation, however, we won’t watch on the graphics area in SolidWorks. This animation will be saved as an AVI file and in order to create it, PhotoWorks will produce a series of still rendered images of our model in the different positions it would assume during the rotation. This series of images will then be put together, in correct order one after another, just like the frames in a movie. The larger the number of frames, the better the quality of the resulting movie, but the longer it will take for the whole animation to be completed and the more computational resources that will be needed, of course. To produce the rendered animation, click on Save Animation.

A dialog window will open and prompt you to select options to save your animation to a file. From this window select where to save your file, give it a name and make sure to choose PhotoWorks Buffer as the renderer. From this same window, you can also determine how many frames per second you wish to have and what portion of the animation you will save, if not the entire animation.  I decided to go with the default number of frames per second of 7.5 and to save only the first two seconds of the animation.

Another small dialog window opens, this time prompting you to select a compressor. Depending on the kind of compression you select, your file size will decrease, but also at the risk of affecting the final quality by adding artifacts, for instance. I chose to leave it uncompressed, but to each their own.  Press OK.

Photoworks will now proceed to render each of the frames and then the AVI file will be generated and saved in the location you previously indicated. Depending on the size of the animation and the options you selected in PhotoWorks, this process can take a few minutes or several hours. You can then take this AVI file to an application such as Camtasia or Pinacle for post-processing.  Neat, huh? I know PhotoWorks will not be around next year, but I hope this information can benefit those of you who still aren’t ready to upgrade just yet.

Just as promised, here is the video of the second part of what was going to be my presentation at the local SWUG.  This one deals with Free Motion, changing component properties and changing the orientation and camera views during the animation.  By the way, I added a new option to the controls of the video. If you notice, there’s a button in the video control bar that will allow you to select from a floating table of contents and choose exactly what part of the video you want to watch. I hope someone out there finds this video useful. There’s a third and last part coming soon. Enjoy!

While checking out the 2010 Beta, I ran into this new option available for Motion Studies, when you have SolidWorks Simulation added as well. You can find it listed as Structural Simulation Analysis for Motion in the What’s New Guide.  It simply means that in SolidWorks 2010, and with Motion and Simulation added, you can perform your stress, deformation or factor of safety analysis automatically from Motion, without having to go through the process of setting or importing loads, setting up boundary conditions, etc.  And then you can watch the results as you run the animation.

This example shows how easy it is. First, you set up and run your Motion Study (Motion Analysis only), then you click on Simulation Setup, select the component you want to investigate, and set up a time of duration in the timeline.

Then you click on Calculate Simulation Results, and let SolidWorks take care of the rest.

This is what you’ll see after the analysis has been concluded. If you run the animation now, you can see the stress distribution on the component as it is moving in the assembly. Neat, isn’t it? Of course, you still have the option for SolidWorks Simulation of importing motion loads, just the same as you used to in the past.