animator

Gil,

Did you have the time bar moved to the time when you wanted the explode to start? Are any parts moving in the rest of the animation or just a view change? I tried it here on a simple assembly, and I was able to get the explode to start at a specific time independent of the first 5 second view change.

If you see an orange line extending back to the beginning, ctrl-drag the keypoint from the beginning to the place where you want it.

Yes. i moved the time bar to the 15th second before applying the explode step. in the animation all the parts stay in place - no movement what so ever. the only thing which changes in the first 15 seconds is the view.

After applying the explode to the animation in the 15th second, the orange line which suppose to appear doesn't appear. Only one keypoint of the explode appear at the beginning of the timeline (a blue keypoint), but if I control drag it (or drag it without control) then no orange timeline is added between the keypoints, instead solidworks adds another blue keypoint to the time description (without any timeline stretching from the previous one to the new one)!

Beside the overall animation timeline (thin black) and the view orientation timeline (thick black), there are no additional timelines or timeline colours available in my time graph, the only hint that there are supposed to be such timelines are the blue diamond keypoints at the beginning time of all my schematic components in the animation bar.

I'm using SW2006 sp5 with windows XP sp2.

thanks, Gil

Hi Gil,

Ahh, animator - software that needs some SERIOUS attention to the user interface in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm not great at it but one tip I can give you is to right click the explode key at the begining of the timeline and paste that key to the point where you want the explode to start. I've not tried with Explodes, but when I'm trying to stop strange movements of things that usually helps.

Otherwise, try making a simple assembly, say two things, and make your mistakes on that before trying with your main one.Also, once you have a point that's working ok, make sure you save before moving on to another part of the animation, that way when it all goes mental you can get back to the last good bit.

Finally, I dont know how you're doing to the view animation, but using a camera with 'dummys' to control the view and position seems a pretty good way to have a look round an obeject.

Good luck.

Hello Lee,

I second that without any hesitation.

Allready tried it - but in vain! When I right click the explode feature in the animation bar, then SW highlights also the move component item and the appearence item, and opens a menu in which there is no explode option. Attempting to move the keypoint on the explode line achives nothing: SW will not create orange timeline between it and the previous keypoint (it will just copy the blue keypoint to a new position while leaving one behind in the initial position whithout any change in animation).

My assembly is very simple (3 components in one hirarchy layer). the explode step consists of only one moved component.

Regarding the saving issue: here is another strange thing - while pressing the save button solidworks colses the viewports of the animation bar. althogh i didnt check if it actually saved okay (should check it in the near future)

Could you please clarefy this point? What are exactly dummys?

Thanks. I allready had success when i used the "move component" in the animation, instead of the "explode" - different terminology but i think the result is the same, or at least what i wanted.

Gil

When I say 'dummy' I mean create a simple part, say a sphere or something, and put two of them in your assembly. Now when you set up a camera set the target as the origen of one of tehm and the camera position to the origen of the other. Also, set the camera roll to a plane of the one that control position and make sure you mate the plane parallel to something that keeps the camera the right way up - other wise you can have some funny twisting views!

Now you can use these two components to animate the camera view, and then hide them when you render or play your animation (make sure you hide them at the begining of the time line or they'll fade in and out...). This technique is good for creating walk-throughs and stuff....I think in 2007 there might be a bit more camera animation control but I've not had a moment to have a play as yet.

O.K. Lee, I think I got the idea: The 'dummy' objects are placed so I can snap and mate the camera to them, so if I apply movement to them the camera stays fixed to them. thanks for clearing this for me.

Cheers, Gil

"Lee Bazalgette - factorydesign" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@proxy01.news.clara.net...