Where is the Animation option in Modeling? 1

[BOPdesigner]

Sorry for the really basic question here. Refering to John's last post here:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=313982

NX 7.5. I am looking for a way to animate the deformation of an elastomer mount between two solid objects. I have the elastomer as a deformable part in my assembly and when I move one of the objects it is connected to it updates properly but I want to animate this motion. Is there a way to do this outside of Motion Simulation? Where is the Animation option he is talking about?

 

[JohnRBaker]

You can find the 'Animation' function at...

View -> Visualization -> Create Animation...

To find more information about how to set up and run an 'animation' go to the NX Help files and search on 'Create an Animation'. Now you'll have to sort through at lot of irrelevant stuff since most of the 'hits' will be referencing 'animation' option from the CAE simulation products (starting with NX 8.0 you'll be able to search the NX Help files and explicitly skip areas like CAE or CAM which will make it much easier to get 'hits' on only relevant topics).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Ok that guides me through how to change/reorient the view to create the animation. And in that option when the cursor changes to an airplane, I can't right click on my component and move it, which in turn causes the path for my elastomer to move with it and my deformable component to deform. How to you use that workflow to animate objects by moving components around instead of manipulating the modeling views?

 

[JohnRBaker]

That's NOT 'Animation', that 'Navigation', something totally different.

Animation allows you to create a so-called 'stepping' or 'FrameNumber' expression and then run through a number of iterations while either viewing the resulting animation or capturing frames of a video.

As a simple demo of how you can 'animate' the size of a block, see the attached example. Open the file and go to...

View -> Visualization -> Create Animation...

...and press the 'Preview Animation' button and then select the 'VCR-like 'Play' button.

Now look at the Expressions to see how I controlled the Height of the block and going back to the above Animation dialog, select the Edit 'Key Frame' button to see how I defined the number of steps in the animation sequence (it's best to set the number of steps to be equal to value of the 'FrameNumber' expression +1). BTW, the expression name 'FrameNumber' is a unique and reserved name which is used ONLY for creating Animations. This is the only expression which you can increment and therefore any and all 'variables' must be driven by this one expression.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Oh my, thats is pretty kludgy but I think I get the just of it. Still can't get it to work for my application however. I have a distance constraint that is a function of FrameNumber which should move a component relative to another. But when I preview the animation it doesn't work. Open Elastomer_Mounting.prt if you have a moment to see where I have gone wrong. When FrameNumber = 0 the sides of the plate should be aligned and the elastomer undeformed.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Sorry I forgot to mention this earlier, but before this will work you have to open the 'Create Animation' dialog, select the Edit 'Parameters' button, toggle ON the 'Update Expressions' option and hit OK. Now you can run the Animation as previously outlined.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.