Speaker 1: 3D animations can
provide companies of almost any
industry with huge leverage in
improving the operational
efficiency and nearly all
aspects of their business. And
therefore also gained many cost
benefits, greater understanding
of the design from concept stage
to when it is in the factory.
Animations can help throughout
the design process. You can
convey more information and go
further than pictures can
because of things such as cross
sections, transparency and
explosions that just wouldn't be
possible or would take
significant time and effort in
real life. Due to this
understanding costs can be saved
with mistakes and issues fixed
earlier in the product life
cycle. What you are currently
watching is a quick example of
an animation to show the
features of the Go-Pro gimble.
These animations were created in
SOLIDWORKS and then exporter to
SOLIDWORKS visualize for
rendering. Animations is built
right into SOLIDWORKS interface.
So no need to transfer to
another program or add in and
can all be done with all
licenses of SOLIDWORKS. The
motion manager will be turned on
by default when SOLIDWORKS is
installed and can be found at
the bottom of the screen, just
above the status bar. When one
of the tabs is activated, the
timeline will appear the
dropdown in the top left is what
type of motion you want to
create animation. And basic
motion will be in all SOLIDWORKS
versions.
The animation option allows us
to control mates and motors and
basic motion allows adding mass
and context between parts motion
analysis is the simulation add
in that allows you to add forces
and get physics results out with
charts and data. This is only
available within SOLIDWORKS
Premium. None of the animations
I show you in this video, use
anything other than the
animation option. As you can see
you get a full copy of the
feature tree with a timeline for
each part that represents
time-based changes. We can
create what we call keys at
different times in the timeline.
If these keys are different from
what their neighbors are, then
SOLIDWORKS will put in what we
call the change bar between
them, which represents, during
this time, something is
changing. The color of this
change bar depends on what is
changing between the keys as we
can animate movement of geometry
in different ways, but also hide
and show parts, change mates,
appearances, cameras, and even
lights. All of which are again
controlled using keys and change
bars to show how easy it is to
create one of the animation
shown earlier. I'm going to
create the animation of a GoPro
being attached to the gimbal.
Before I go to the animation and
the model tab we can see, I have
already created an exploded
view.
This is an extremely simple
exploded view, rotating the
Mount in the camera, but this
can be as many steps as you
want, and might have already
been created to show an exploded
view in the drawing. You can
create it from here and even
save it, but we will bring it
into the timeline as it will
give us full control on what is
happening. I will activate the
motion, study one and right
click to rename the initial keys
or whatever it looked like in
the model tab when this motion
study was created. Using the
animation wizard tool, I will
choose to bring in the exploded
view with a slightly delayed
start time. This will create the
keys for the animation we saw in
the model tab. These can be
modified or deleted if
necessary. Next I will create
the animations straight within
the timeline. First, I will pull
the camera down on to the Mount.
I want this to happen after the
arms come down and therefore I
will move my time bar to three
seconds and place a key. This is
to ensure the camera does not
move from nought to three
seconds because the keys are the
same next. I will move to five
seconds ensure auto keys is on.
So as soon as I make a change in
the viewport, a key is created
at the five seconds, and then I
will drag the camera down. Next
I show, show the holding screw
and show it screwing onto the
Mount. It is currently hidden
and I don't want to make it
visible until five seconds. And
therefore I shall again, select
the part and place key. Ill move
to six seconds and then showed
the part to phase it in. Notice
the key is again created at six
seconds because of the auto key
feature. This key is different
to the key at five seconds. And
therefore the change bar is
created and the part will
interpolate between the two
different states. The position
of the screw is not free like
the camera was and is actually
controlled with a mate.
Therefore I shall animate this
mate changing instead. It is the
same idea, except now you are
changing a value rather just
moving the part in the viewport.
I have renamed the mate distance
of screw to make it easier to
find. For this mate I shall
place a key. So it doesn't
change until six seconds. And
then at nine seconds double
click the mate and change the
value to move the screw in. This
works okay, but this looks like
we're simply pushing the screw
in rather than screwing it in.
Therefore the last way to
display parts moving is motors.
And we show, add a rotary motor
to show the screw rotating.
There are many different ways to
control the motor, but I show
you distance and degrees of 720,
and then have it only coming on
at seven seconds in the timeline
for two seconds. Once complete,
it will appear at the top of the
motion study feature tree and
can be edited or suppressed as
necessary. The orientation of
the model is constant to what it
was when we created the motion
study. We can change it, but
when we play the animation, it
will jump back to its original
position. I will move back to
zero seconds and turn off the
tool preventing any orientation
being saved by right clicking on
the orientation and camera views
and disabling the option
disabled view, key creation. I
can then activate the camera and
it will remember this change. I
can then use the same auto keys
controls to change what the
camera is looking at and create
keys to animate it. To output
the animation we can save an MP4
of what it looked like on screen
with a set size and frame rate,
or a photo view render if we
have SOLIDWORKS professional, if
we want the most photo realistic
animation, we can use visualize
professional. This is an extra
purchase further to what you get
when you purchase.
SOLIDWORKS professional, but it
allows us to export animations
as well as create animations,
VR's interactive image, and
generally give the viewer more
of an experience with the model.
To export it we can use the
visualize, add in to export
advanced. It will take through
all animations from solid works,
except for in context and
assembly level features, which
can be used in SOLIDWORKS to
deform parts. If we want to
learn more about animations or
visualize, we have training
courses that will cover what we
have covered in more detail as
well as much, much more. Be sure
to check them out..