Animation advice

Apr 20, 2006 3 Replies

I am a Design Engineer relitivley conversant in SW. I have basic knowledge of SW animation but I would like to animate a machine from start op to finish op.



This would include animating chains, links and conveyors.



Does SW animation have the ability to do this? Or would I have to purchase third party software? If so which one?


Cheers.


Animator is good for mechanisms where the motion is fairly constrained. Chains will be a challenge. That's already true in SW without even considering Animator, though. Doing a large machine taking a part through an entire cycle is entirely possible, depending on what type of processes you have. It may work best as a compilation of several different animations. Animator works best when you can change something like a mate distance or angle value and animate that changing over time. If say a box has to be folded and moved down a conveyor, then flipped or labeled or whatever, it may take some inventiveness to make it all happen, and will probably be best as several small animations pasted together with an editor.

john gaskell wrote:

John, if you can afford to run a beta version of SolidWorks 2007, there is new functionality in this area to help you do what you want to do.

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Regards

Mark Biasotti SolidWorks

then again - we are not supposed to talk about it or use it for production purposes are we? ;o)

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