Problem Using Solidwork Animation

[jlsmit15]

I working in a modular robotics lab and would like to animate a solidworks assembly I have created to demonstrate how I envision a new robot would move.

The assembly basically consists of five modules with four connectors in between them. I would like to be able to show them inching along, each component being pushed up and along and placed down, similar to a caterpillar.

I'm having trouble in that solid works isn't registering that the robot should be moving along a floor, and therefore shouldn't be able to fall below a certain plane. When I attempt to move components, instead of dragging along, they just swing about randomly and I cannot get the effect I want.

Is there a way to constrain the assembly so that it cannot pass through the plane on which it sits so that I can simulate the effect of a floor? Or would it be better to actually create a floor to use?

When I attempted to create a floor I still was unsure what type of constraint to use so that although the assembly could not pass through the floor but could still move freely on top of it.

I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions!

 

[Theophilus]

Oh, boy. Well, the short, unsatisfying answer is forget about it. No chance of this working with the terribly buggy/limited Animator. But that's no fun.

So the other answer is that maybe I've misunderstood what this really ought to look like--and if that's true--this might be possible.

If I'm imagining things correctly, I may have a very simple solution. Create a part which is, in effect, a single surface. Assuming this looks like a caterpillar on a table, the surface part will have two large flat expanses with a half-cylinder between the expanses, connected with generous radii. You mate each of the components with a tangent mate to this single-surface part, create a couple of other mates so it will stay where you want it in the X axis, and then simply move the single-surface part under the linked component pieces. They'll move in a near sin-wave sort of form as the surface passes beneath them. If you render the animation, you simply hid this moving surface part and the look will provide the effect you're looking for.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but in terms of using Animator, this is a piece of cake--assuming I'm getting this correctly (now). You can go to my site (see link below) and follow-up by email if you need further detail. The next step is to see a snapshot or model of the bits you're attempting to move to confirm whether this method might work.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people governed by fear cannot value freedom.

 

[jlsmit15]

Thanks Jeff for your help! I got my animation to work, and played it back in Solidworks and it looked just how I wanted it to.

However, when I saved it to an avi file, the animation changed, no longer looked as it should and the key points turned red. The only reason I can think of why this would occur is that in order to make the motion precise enough, between different key points I changed which objects in the assembly were fixed and which were not. Am I on the right track as to why the avi file might not be saving as solidworks plays back the animation? Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Jennifer

 

[Theophilus]

Well, Jennifer, if you're seeing red key points--at least in my experience--your animation is hosed (meaning you'll have to start over). I see this anytime the animation is allowed to perform a Rebuild, generally.

Animator is incredibly buggy--shouldn't even be on the market in this condition. But SolidWorks has decided not to solve these critical problems. Whatever the reason, there are some secret rules of motion that Animator uses that are truly different from the known rules of motion that SolidWorks uses. This can be confoundingly frustrating.

What I do to help get past this is write out a detailed script of every motion and how long each step takes. This makes doing it over go much more quickly, and also helps in getting it right the first time. (You get red keys if you edit anything in your animation time-line, too, which generally spells doom.)

If you can, search this forum for some other comments I've made to this effect--I'm out of time for now. But I can only speak generally without seeing the specific assembly/animation anyway.

Good luck, and may you have enormous patience.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people governed by fear cannot value freedom.

 

[rockguy]

The red key points appear because you have a conflict in your animation. Basically you have told the animation to have multiple things happen at the same time that conflict with each other. This could be conflicting mates driving pieces, different parts (or the same part) trying to move multiple directions.

Sounds to me like when you edited the animation and "fixed" some of your pieces you unknowingly created conflicts. You'll need fix those conflicts to take care of the red keys.

Make sure you rebuild your animation after making changes to be sure they "take". If you don't rebuild you could create an issue on one step but know about it until 10 steps later when the animation rebuilds. When you save to a file the first thing animator does is rebuild the entire animation, that's why you did see your issues until save time.

Animator does have its quirks but once you use it for a while and learn how it ticks you can make some nice animations with it.

Another piece of advice. It's best to create your animations (especially if they are complex) in small chuncks and then piece them together into the final animation. I also prefer to save as individual images and piece those together in a compiler to create the animation file. It's more reliable, gives you more control and is faster in my opinion.

One other note. SW just released a new Step By Step Guide, "creating Animations with SolidWorks" that is really good. It's about 600 pages and covers a lot of information on creating simple to complex animations. It covers the many different methods for doing the same thing, talks about the different ways to drive motion, covers rendered and non rendered output and has an example DVD that's about 5 gigs in size. I'm going to write a review of teh book at my blog when I have some time. You can learn more about it here

http://www.robrodriguez.com/wordpre...2010-RR-dot-com-Animations-Guide-Buy-page.htm

Rob Rodriguez CSWP

http://www.axiscadsolutions.com

http://www.robrodriguez.com

http://www.robrodriguezblog.com

Eastern Region SWUGN Representative

http://www.swugn.org

http://www.nvtswug.com

SW 2007 SP 2.0

 

[Theophilus]

Rob, that hasn't been my experience with Animator, but perhaps I'm going about things in my typical heterodox manner.

Generally I leave things free to move that I want to move, and I don't change the states of mates while programming my animations. So gates can swing freely from zero to ninety degrees, for instance. This causes me to wonder why a rebuild during the creation of the animation will always move my gate a degree or several degrees at the beginning or end of my animation (generally causing red key points). Nowhere was the animation told to move anything from its original position, and nothing was touched--a simple rebuild caused a trashing of the animation. Anyway, it's as simple as that with most of the problems I encounter, so I find Animator to be buggy as hell and therefore maddening.

So I frequently program the animation from start to finish, go through the animation slowly dragging the timeline, and then immediately render through PhotoWorks to get the final output. Never a rebuild, since I get random errors 80% of the time, even though there are no conflicts of motion built into the animation (or mates or other constraints). I've found this will generally work much better. I often have to save the output more than once since decals will often render as blanks, or suddenly shift their mapping by 90° during rendering, or some other error (more bugs). Sometimes all I have to do is render it a second time and everything is amazingly resolved with no bugs. Once I have the output I need, I'll rebuild the animation just for fun and watch everything inexplicably turn red. The animation finally ran with no flaws, and then suddenly turns to trash because of something the rebuild ghosts caused. Ridiculous.

So--that's not to say good output cannot be had. It's to say that good output cannot be had inexpensively or without a great lack of expected sleep or without breaking even on a project (unless you bid high and still win the gig).

Even when the animation self-destructs with red key points everywhere, I can save the assembly to an eDrawing and the animation comes in perfectly. So that's what I do now when I want a quick, clean animation to give to a client. Save to eDrawing (small file), show them how to find the animation within eDrawings, and enjoy a feature that works as intended. I'll generally do this now to get confirmation of timing, part speed, etc. before committing to hours of render time.

I'm eager to see what modo can do in the animation realm. That might win me over to PV360 if done well, or I might purchase the full version.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people governed by fear cannot value freedom.

 

[rockguy]

Hey Jeff,

I don't want to make it seem like Animator isn't buggy. It is and it can be frustrating. I think it would be a better product if it were a bit more disconnected from core SolidWorks. I'd say the same for PhotoWorks.

Rendered animations offer a whole other level of complextion which of course can bring a whole other set of issues with it. I've had decal and material issues as well when creating animations. That's why I use the "save as images" option for output. It allows me to monitor the output frame by frame and start and stop where ever I need to if I have to adjust things.

Modo can create some great animations but it does have a learning curve. It's a different mindset from SolidWorks. Worth learning I think if animations are a good portion of your workflow.

Using PV360 as the render buffer for Animator will be a bonus for rendered animations in SW but PV360 will offer nothing new in terms of animation capabilities. You'll still have whatever tools SW animator (motion) does or doesn't provide.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP

http://www.axiscadsolutions.com

http://www.robrodriguez.com

http://www.robrodriguezblog.com

Eastern Region SWUGN Representative

http://www.swugn.org

http://www.nvtswug.com

SW 2007 SP 2.0