Animate

Menu access: Dynamics | Animate

Description:

Allows to animate the mechanism according to the forces and velocity applied.

You can also activate measurements you previously defined through the "Measures" function.

General philosophy:

The animation take in consideration the constraint positioning made will assembling the components.

The components to take in consideration for the animation must be part of a constraint system. If the file contains several constraint systems, you will have to choose the one you want to animate.

The dialog box allows you to start the animation and to use some functionalities described below.

Available option(s):

The player.

In order, you have the following functionalities:

• Eject: close the dialog box and quit the function.

• Beginning: go back to the beginning of the animation.

• Backward: the animation is played backward (the more you click on the button, the more the animation is fast).

• Stop: stop the animation and go back to the beginning of the animation.

• Record: allows to record the animation (creation of an AVI file).

• Play: start the animation (or the animation computation if it is the first time you start it with the actual parameters).

• Pause: freeze the animation. Click again on this button or on the play button to resume.

• Forward: the animation is accelerated (the more you click on the button, the more the animation is fast).

• End: go to the end of the animation.

• Repeat: if the button is activated, the animation is repeated.

• The cursor: by moving the cursor, you manually control the animation.

The Computing step:

The computing step is defined in relation to the time. It represents the time interval between two positions computations of the mechanism. The more the step is small the more the trajectories are precise.

The absorption factor:

Allow to set an approximative value for the absorption on the mechanism (frictions, loss of energy...). The absorption factor is apply globally to all the mechanism.

The measures:

This option allows to activate the measure for a "measure set" previously define through the function "Dynamics | Measures".

The drop down list allows you to choose the set you want to get the measure.

The  Browse  button allows to define the location and the format of the resulting file. The generated file can be an Excel file or a text file.

The step use for the measurement is the same as the computation step.

Autoadaptative step:

The autoadaptative step allows to use a computation step that vary on a way that the maximum displacement of part between two computation steps do net exceed the defined values.

The value of the computation step is used by default, but if between two steps, one of the parts move more that the specified values, the step is punctually reduced in order to respect the conditions.

With this option, the computation is longer. This mode must be used only if you noticed incoherent displacement of parts (a part suddenly swap to an extreme position or move totally out of the mechanism for example).

Specific point(s):

You can stop the computation at any time by using the "Esc" key

You can use the dynamic rotation while the animation is running.

The units used for the dynamic functions can be modified in the menu "Tools |Options".