Solidworks Animations For Presentations

[MackyInternational]

Hi Guys,

I am relatively new to solidworks and am trying to put together a presentation showing exploded views and views from all sides of the product.
I keep trying the screen capture tool, but i cant get the rotations to go slow enough, or the exploded view to return to normal. I have looked though the help topics but am struggling to find any decent tips.

I am also having problems with the quality of the screen capture when Large IGES files are displayed, is there a way around this or is it just my machine spec?

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[StefanHamminga]

You should check out the Animator add-in, start with the manual (usually found in \Program Files\SolidWorks\lang\english\animator.chm)


Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[JMirisola]

Animator is an excellent way to go. You can auto-animate your exploded view, and then rotate around as you wish. You can choose the speed at which everything happens as well. It may take you a bit to get the hang of things but, ultimately, you'll end up with impressive results.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2MB RAM, nVidia 2500M

 

[ctopher]

Also, go to Help/Online Tutorial. Select the Animator tutorial.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-06)

 

[Theophilus]

And if you have Animator (part of SW Office), go to Tools > Add-ins to show it.

What version are you running (of SW)?

I'm not sure if you're already trying out Animator and having difficulties with the screen capture of your animation or if you're still wondering whether you can get an animation. If you have an animation already and the capture of your screen during the animation isn't resolving quite right, you could have a graphics card deficiency--perhaps the card isn't quite keeping up with the frames (I've had that problem). Normally I only screen capture an animation for a test before I render the animation--and I don't have these problems when rendering the animation (using PhotoWorks).

To unexplode (in SolidWorks), right-click and select Collapse.

In Animator, I think the best thing you can do is complete the tutorial ctopher mentioned above--it's a great way to get your feet wet with what Animator can do. Then, pick a project you'd like to do--it's a great way to get your feet wet with what Animator cannot do. Seriously, there's been some discussion on this board about some limits of Animator and how they can be overcome, but a lot of that stuff is fairly advanced. For what you mentioned you'd like to do, I think Animator will probably work very well for you.

If you have PhotoWorks, you can incorporate it into your animation for photo-real animations--just takes a lot longer to render each frame.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.