Previewing the Motion of Mechanisms

You can animate bodies and component assemblies by controlling the degrees of freedom of the joints enforced in the mechanism.

This task shows you how to:

Before you begin: Create a mechanism for a physical product or component assembly.
Important: The bodies or component assemblies must be up-to-date. To do so, from the Standard section of the action bar, click and then click Initial State Solve .
See Also
Creating Mechanisms

Animate the Mechanism

  1. From the Assembly section of the action bar, click Kinematics Player .
  2. Optional: To select the degrees of freedom to animate:
    1. Click Manage Controlled DOFs to show the list of degrees of freedom you can control in the mechanism.
    2. From the list, select the degrees of freedom to display in the Control View section of the dialog box.
    3. Optional: Click and select Select all or Clear all selections to select or clear every check box.
    4. Click Manage Controlled DOFs to go back to the previous dialog box.
    The selected degrees of freedom appear in the dialog box.
  3. To modify the value of a degree of freedom , you can either:
    • Move the slider.
    • Enter a value in the box.
      Note: For a joint defined manually, specify a value included between its minimum and maximum limits.
    • Use the arrows next to the box.

    Note:
    • The default value of the slider corresponds to the nominal value of the joint.
    • The minimum and maximum values of the degree of freedom cannot be exceeded. If no minimum or maximum value is specified at the creation of the joint, default values are applied.
    Notes:
    • You cannot control or animate gear, rack, cable, spherical, and planar joints.
    • You can only control the translation degree of freedom of a screw joint.

    The bodies included in the mechanism move according to the value of the controlled degrees of freedom .
  4. Optional: To lock or unlock the value of a degree of freedom , click Lock DOF or Unlock DOF .

    Note: To lock or unlock every controlled degree of freedom , at the top of the dialog box, click Lock All or Unlock All .

  5. Optional: Click Reset All to reset every controlled degree of freedom to its nominal value.
  6. Click

    .

    The initial value of the degrees of freedom is restored.

Record the Animation of the Mechanism

You can record and edit a series of mechanism positions and play them back as an animation. For more information on the Record Animation context toolbar, see Kinematics Player Options.

  1. Click Record Animation .

    Note: A count bubble indicates the number of mechanism positions recorded in the animation. By default, the count bubble displays 1 as the current position of the mechanism is recorded as the first position in the animation.

  2. On the context toolbar, specify the time step (in seconds) between the recording of two mechanism positions.
  3. In the Kinematics Player dialog box, modify the value of the activated degree or degrees of freedom to define a new position for the mechanism. To do so, you can either:
    • Move the slider.
    • Enter a value in the box.
      Note: For a joint defined manually, specify a value included between its minimum and maximum limits.
    • Use the arrows next to the box.
    The bodies included in the mechanism move according to the value of the controlled degrees of freedom .
  4. On the context toolbar, click Add Position to record the current position of the mechanism.
    The new position is added at the end of the animation.
  5. Optional: Click Remove Last Position to remove the last position of the animation.

    Tip: To remove more positions, click Remove Last Position several times.

  6. Add one or several mechanism positions to the recorded animation.
  7. Optional: To modify the speed of the animation, click Animation Settings and enter a value in the Frame Rate box.

    Increase the Frame Rate value to slow down the animation.

    Important: To access the Animation Settings, add at least two positions to the animation.

    The Duration box displays the duration of the animation according to the duration of every recorded position, specified in the Step Duration box.

  8. To play the animation, click Play .

    Note: You can edit the animation by adding or removing positions, and click Play to review the animation again.

  9. Click Exit Record Mode .

    You cannot save recorded mechanism animations.