As Charles says, if you need to animate stuff to show mechanical operation
and find presentation files a bit cumbersome, use Animator.
It is a fantastic program!
I have been using it for various presentations and have found it far easier
to obtain an impressive result than IV presentation files.
Congrats to the 'Animator' programmers (if I remember correctly, there were
a few)
Thanks guys,
Chris B
Charles Bliss wrote in message
news:3F50ADFE.3080006@cbliss.com...
> You are correct; Animator is used on Assemblies. The need was to be
> able to drive more than one constraint at a time and to drive them
> sequentially. The presentation environment has its place but for
> someone doing engineering, there is a greater need to build things that
> move according to rules. The Presentation environment does not meet
> that need. Presentations are useful for showing exploded views in IDW's
> and maybe creating animations for assembly and disassembly. It is also
> a difficult tool to use.
>
> If you are creating AVI's, to show movement, there is almost no
> adherence to geometric constraints. This being the case, the resulting
> animations are more of a marketing tool as they don't convey accurate
> movements. We all know what most of the Inventor users think of
> marketing.
>
> I would hope that future versions of an animation tool will include more
> advanced kinematics with features like path following, gravity,
> acceleration and the like.
>
> In a perfect world, Autodesk would have overhauled the Presentation
> environment and .... No wait, Autodesk would have created a new
> environment which had all the advantages of both Presentation and
> Animator but without the problems of the Presentation environment. It
> is sort of like the DWF fiasco, great idea at the time but never finished.
>
> Bill Bogan wrote:
>
> >Thus, Animator is excellent for use in the assembly, but (as I gather
here)
> >it is not used for the presentation files (IPN).
> >If that is an error in my understanding please correct me.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >-Bill Bogan
> >
> >
> >
> >
>