More Animation Help needed

[Anonymous]

OK, as I posted last week, I'm attempting to create an animation for a client and I'm running into a roadblock when it comes to animating a flat part to bend to the left and/or right and back to flat.

I've been attempting to recreate this effect by making three separate parts and tweaking the middle and bottom portions (the top portion stays in place.

I start out at this stage:

Then need it to tweak to the left like this:

Then back to the "flat" and to this shape:

This needs to be done on numerous items so I'm looking for ideas on how to accomplish such.

If I get something that works well, I'll post the process here for future reference.

[Anonymous]

OK, I think I've figured this out kinda.

In basic terms the whole part needs to be modelled in 3 separate parts with the middle part overlapping the top and bottom part so as to not leave any gaps or sharp corners showing during its rotation from side to side.

Then setting the tweaks and grouping those tweaks to get the motion you need.

Now I just need to play with it all a bit and see if I can get what I want into presentation form.

[JDMather]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Then setting the tweaks and grouping those tweaks to get the motion you need.

Now I just need to play with it all a bit and see if I can get what I want into presentation form.

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Tweaks? Presentation?  Are you using *.ipn?
Why aren't you using Inventor Studio for this?

[Anonymous]

JD,

Excuse my ignorance but I wasn't aware Studio also did animations. I know it'll do renderings and such.

Ugh....found it.....time to do some serious reading.

Like I stated in a previous post, I hadn't created an animation in Inventor since well before Studio came out.

[Anonymous]

OK, so I did a bunch of reading on how to use Studio for animations (Thanks Curtis). Sooooooo much better than the way one had to animate in an ipn file years ago. Anyways, I've created a part file like the one shown above, added a user defined parameter to control the deformation to the left. One issue solved but leads to another, with this parameter added, I am unable to add a 2nd parameter for it to deform to the right as it would of course then be a driven parameter.

So that led me to see if I could simply drive the deformation to the right within the animation process (aka, giving it a negative value).

So I create an assy of these parts:

And import the parameter for the animation:

Specifiy the required deformation, timeline, ect:

And then run the animation:

As you can see, it works just dandy and by using the "mirror" option I can get it to return back to zero (vertical) without an issue. But there lies the problem, How in the world do I get the animation to also deform the part in the opposite direction (in this case, to the right)?  I need it to start at zero (vertical), deform to the Left (as shown), return to zero and deform to the Right and then back to Zero all in one process.

What am I missing here?

I've been scanning over the processes in Curtis' book for 2012, did something in this process change for 2014?

Right now this is my main sticking point on this animation.

[Rory_M]

Is this the kind of thing you're looking for? See the attached file and go into the Studio animation timeline and hit play.

Sketch1 contains a line that rotates as an angle dimension is changed. The end of the line is then projected into sketch 2 and the end of the profile made coincident to it.

As the angle changes, the x position of the projected point changes, and the sketch with it.

It's easier to see what it going in if you edit the sketch1 angle dimension from 0 to 45 degrees.

It's a simple way of getting reciprocating animation with just a single parameter to change.

File is in Inventor 2013 format by the way.

Hope this is useful.

Rory

[Anonymous]

Rory,

Thanks! I guess that's the approach I'll have to take at this stage.

You'd think putting in a negative value would move the object in the negative direction or the like.

Inventor Studio should allow the option for a third value to fulfill the possible need to go from one point to the others.

I think this is or might be a suggestion for the Idea Station.

[Rory_M]

Another tip to avoid negative dimensions is to add an additional sketch line that is off to the side, so that instead of animating from -10 to +10, you can animate from 30 to 50.

See attached image for example.

Rory