. . . example animation.

Regards Tim


    **EDIT** added improved versions below.

Tim your bloody marvellous, wow. You are a TurboCAD rockstar!

Daz,

    ummm, well, it's nice of you to say so, but it's totally untrue.

    I struggled to get this to work, and have, so far, given up on a better
    rendering.

    The lofting commands are poorly covered in the help file, with no full   
    explanation of how they are supposed to work.  This is very frustrating.   
    Working examples would be beneficial.  Is this really too much to ask?

    Anyway, I hoped the simple example might help.

    Thanks again.

Regards Tim

     . . . example animation.

Regards Tim

Thanks for sharing, Tim

Nice work on the animation Tim,  when I saw your animation I would not have guessed that you had used the lofting command.

The lofting commands are poorly covered in the help file, with no full explanation of how they are supposed to work.  This is very frustrating. Working examples would be beneficial.  Is this really too much to ask?

Should be available in 3 to 4 weeks, (I have to go to sleep occasionally) 

Guys,

    thanks for looking.
    I've managed to render and upload an improved version to the original post.
    By setting the circles, initially, a small distance apart (0.01mm), the loft now renders in all modes.
    However, undoing the animation, does not remove the generated loft!
    Ah well, back to the drawing board . . . 

Regards Tim

Nice work on the animation Tim,  when I saw your animation I would not have guessed that you had used the lofting command.

Quote

The lofting commands are poorly covered in the help file, with no full explanation of how they are supposed to work.  This is very frustrating. Working examples would be beneficial.  Is this really too much to ask?

Should be available in 3 to 4 weeks, (I have to go to sleep occasionally) 

Andy,

    that sounds interesting.
    In the mean time . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Regards Tim

Tim thankyou for your efforts here, thats much appreciated.

    No problem.  It keeps my one working brain cell active. 

Regards Tim

Hope no-one minds, I was just having a play - testing if the latest TC 2017 update had been repaired with regards to AL and object redraw (its not).

The attached does not work correctly in TC 2017 (at least not for me), but works fine in TC 2016, its a low pressure gas diaphragm.

Andy,

    a neat and interesting alternative.
    Yes, works fine in 2016.

Regards Tim

Andy,

    not that a diaphragm needs it, but, the advantage of your version/method is that materials can be applied to the spin.
    Could be useful?

Regards Tim

Nice one Tim,   I must admit I hadn't thought of that,   some of the old leather (Gas) diaphragms were quite 'grainy' after being in use for many years.

For me personally I have no problem with any of your ideas or modifications to something that I might have done.

I will post all my work on the 8 different tcw designs ( none are related ) and their associated animations before the next step below.

Andy & Tim: Posted here because I knew youd see it. Are there any special screen sizes, settings or anything else that you can think of that I should use for settings prior to posting to youtube vidoes?
( just wanna cover all bases prior to: never posted to youtube before)

Daz,

    using YouTube is fairly straightforward.
    Sign up and get yourself a channel, and most of the information you require is readily available.

    Try and upload at the highest quality/resolution that you can, so your viewers have more of a choice, depending on their download speeds.

    I use Camtasia Studio for annotations and editing, but you can upload your animations directly, as some editing of your rendered videos can be done using YouTube.
    This might be all you need.

    You'll easily find the method that suits your needs best.
    There are myriad ways to achieve the same result/s.

    We're sure looking forward to the final results.

Regards Tim

Personally,  I convert to MP4 using a third party program before uploading, yes there is some loss of quality, but like most things in life its a compromise.   

Use a 16:9 ratio (like the pre-set HDTV) to avoid black lines at the sides of the movie,

If using the built-in movie templates (option menu - templates), do a small test first,  on my computer none of the programs including my windows 10 can open files which are saved using AVI compression, I always untick this option in the options - movie page, try it and see if it works for you. 

Personally,  I convert to MP4 using a third party program before uploading, yes there is some loss of quality, but like most things in life its a compromise.   

Use a 16:9 ratio (like the pre-set HDTV) to avoid black lines at the sides of the movie,

If using the built-in movie templates (option menu - templates), do a small test first,  on my computer none of the programs including my windows 10 can open files which are saved using AVI compression, I always untick this option in the options - movie page, try it and see if it works for you. 

I use Handbrake to convert and reduce without loss of quality. Here is a video I made for Dave Taylor at one time to show my whole process.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gwmwda239r7f3g/Camtasia%20-%20MP4%20-%20Handbrake%20-%20YouTube%20DBC.mp4?dl=0

Why do you need the loft to undo, Tim?

Why do you need the loft to undo, Tim?

Hi Murray,

    When running the scenario above, a loft is created.
    Thus, when I select Edit/Undo Animation Scenario, it appears reasonable to expect that everything is undone, i.e the created loft is undone.

    What happens is that the loft is still extant within the drawing.
    If the scenario is run again after selecting Edit/Undo Animation Scenario, running the scenario removes the loft and a new one is generated.

    Also, after running the scenario, if you move a copy of the loft to some other area of the drawing and then run the scenario, both lofts are removed and a new one generated.
    However, the option to Edit/Undo Animation Scenario is no longer available, as though nothing had changed.

    Whilst we may, or may not, require the loft to remain is irrelevant, and not a great problem to work around.
    However, this behaviour appears completely illogical and cockeyed to me.

    Perhaps I am missing something?

Regards Tim

    Perhaps I am missing something?

Regards Tim

It seems every version of TC brings some 'quirks' with regards AL (that's a kind word for bugs).

A patched  2017 is better in some ways to 2016 with AL, but in other ways its worse than TC 2016 with AL

Andy

Hi Andy,

    Over the years, I've become ambivalent to 'quirks' and 'features' which appear in each version . . . sigh!

    I'm attempting, as I write, to download 2017.  Slow isn't the word!
    A present for my 68th birthday. 
    Can't wait to see what's 'new'. 

Regards Tim

   
    TURBOCAD Pro Platinum 2017 (build 62.2) does not resolve issues mentioned in Reply #19, . . . which look like being AL specific. 

Regards Tim

The scale function in anilab doesnt change the scaling of the spring in X direction in the attached image, The spring was created by revolving a 2D circle alone.

Is there any way of scaling the size on the X plane?
or
Adjusting the spring length as the diaphram moves?

If it still says 'spin' in the selection palette it may not scale properly (with or without AL).

On ACIS solids, the scale works if,  ACIS properties - 'Allow Axes Scale' is ticked, but not usually how one desires it to work,   this isn't new - it was never actually designed to work in a single axes with ACIS, (though I kept hoping it would be fixed),

One way (try it on a copy of the file) would be to convert to a TC surface, that usually scales ok and in the direction required.

One can always 'cheat'  and use a number of single coils and the move command on each,  another way could be to use a compound profile sweep along an exploded helix providing your not using TC v2017,

The distributor animations are done and Ive got the Diaphram object working in anilab. Is it possible to change the length of the Diaphram Spring length in anilab?

Ive tried the scale function and it I get strange results. Or could I set a variable to Diaphram Spring ( revolved ) which is a parttree part and incrementally modify the number of coils in anilab? ( if so then how can I do it?)

And I need to do the same to the CounterWeightSpring.  Can anyone help thanks?

Update I can now scale down incrmentally but not reverse the scale any ideas?

Had a go at your file, with the large ACIS spring its actually doing pretty good, except your top command scale is 0.99, so the bottom command scale should be 1.01 not 1.1,

The counterweight spring - that was a different matter, the ACIS moves out of position a bit whist scaling, this is not your drawing its just something that happens with animated ACIS scale, its not much so may not be noticeable,  (I use 0 to 10 scale y 1.01, and 11 to 20 scale y 0.99, however the killer for me was on my aging computer about 5yrs old now) it took over 11 minutes to animate,   so I exploded the centerweight spring to an TC surface, relocated ref point to the inside of the shorter bent end, and it animated correctly in around 3 minutes.

so if it was me, I'd turn up the ACIS faceter settings (move slider) to about 70% then explode the centreweight spring to a TC surface, and relocate ref point. .  the drawback with that spring is the long end, which will increase in length when the whole spring scales,   not a lot you can do about that,  you could slice the long end off, scale the spring and move the long end to compensate, but is it really worth the hassle, 

Your new computer is probably a lot faster than my old one, so I'd suggest doing you own tests to see what times you get with ACIS and TC surface - don't forget this file is just the springs so you want as shorter time as possible.

Daz,

    yes, I found much the same as Andy, and the reason for the slow rendering, is the small spring, IMHO.
    Even reducing the ACIS quality, for me, does little in reducing the rendering time. Other than that, it renders/animates okay.

Regards Tim

The scale function in anilab doesnt change the scaling of the spring in X direction in the attached image, The spring was created by revolving a 2D circle alone.

Is there any way of scaling the size on the X plane?
or
Adjusting the spring length as the diaphram moves?

Darryl,
did you try using a spline in creating the spring
or am I missing something.
Use 2016 

Andy thanks and your right the scale factor was off. In the last line of my prev post I did say that I got the scale function to work and its quite reliable. Rescaling to the original size is off as it just jumps back to the original size almost immediately. But after rendering on screen it does appear ok as the normal function would be that the diaphram is drawn towards the right side under a low pressure from the vacuum line and atmospheric pressure exerted on the other side, So for all intents and purposes it looks ok when viewed from the gif animation. The final scaling came in at 0.8964 to reduce the length of the spring and a corresponding rescale at 1.1036.

I did the same as you and converted the ACIS objects to TCSurfaces and found that it was satisfactory all around.

Tim yes I do agree, the results upto now are very acceptable,  Did you get my email?

Dean, I looked into a spline and sweep and it was Henrys springs tutorial that filled the gaps in my knowledge and thanks for that. I gotta admit that I did stay with the acis objects that are now just TCSurfaces and like I said they work ok.

To sum up: the diaphram moves nicely and the large spring compresses and scales and rescales in a suitable manner, the diaphram linkage which is connected to the points base plate rotates as the linkage moves, thereby showing the points rotating against the points cam. The counterweights now rotate and pull against those small springs and in turn those springs also rotate about a small arc to simulate the correct actions and after changing them to TCSurfaces they now function ok. 

Given that are so many actions ( movements ) that for all intents and purposes are related to each other I split all the functional elements into separate files, all I have to do now is fit it all together again.

Hey Dean no you didnt miss anything but I think I did, does the scale function work correctly in tcw pp 2016?

Just discovered that I cant simulate rotating the shaft and cam to the same point as this is due what I think is the inherent design of the distributor ( this models for that matter ). Given that the counterweights pivot off the (  weightTop object ). Currently the animation rotation is running anti clockwise and it should rotate clockwise instead ( ooppss ). Point remains that I cant synchronise the counterweights as they just rotate in an arc motion and the cam rotates in a circle motion and that all these parts are rotated as a group( for want of better words ), therefore unless I missed a step completely would someone please check?

Before I realised this problem I got good results with the scaling of the springs and position ( but I left them out  for now ). I guess that Majo was right when he said Im looking forward to seeing the distributor functions, Im still a rookie.

If Im right and this cant be animated should I then leave out the vac advance part as well?

On the bright side the general animation still looks cool.

Tim yes I do agree, the results upto now are very acceptable,  Did you get my email?

Hi Daz,

    yes, just found it! Thanks. 

Regards Tim

Hey Dean no you didnt miss anything but I think I did, does the scale function work correctly in tcw pp 2016?

Using a "Spline"
Scale works in 2016 and 2017.
morphing works only in 2016

Just discovered that I cant simulate rotating the shaft and cam to the same point as this is due what I think is the inherent design of the distributor ( this models for that matter ). Given that the counterweights pivot off the (  weightTop object ). Currently the animation rotation is running anti clockwise and it should rotate clockwise instead ( ooppss ). Point remains that I cant synchronise the counterweights as they just rotate in an arc motion and the cam rotates in a circle motion and that all these parts are rotated as a group( for want of better words ), therefore unless I missed a step completely would someone please check?

Can someone please confirm the above?

Darryl,  I  scrubbed my previous post as I hadn't realised (my fault) that you were referring to an earlier post.

Anyway,  leaving aside the fact I've no idea what you meant by "I cant simulate rotating the shaft and cam to the same point " and the inherent design of the distributor, what is the relationship between the weight top and the weight base, are they fixed, or is the weight top allowed to move slightly within the confines of the two rectangular posts (which the springs are attached to)

Am I right in assuming the shaft rotates, this rotates the weight base/weight top, which rotates the two cams, which rotates the points cam.

If so, can you not just apply compensation to the points cam,  i.e. give it some reverse rotation which is not quite equivalent to the cams movement. the biggest problem would be synchronising exactly when the cams arc due to speed.

Sorry if I am still not understanding what is happening,  Distributors are not my specialty (I was a gasman).

Attached is a rough example, in the images brown is shaft, Red cams, green point cam.

Ok, all aspects work correctly but I dont think I can animate this aspect correctly as the correct action are:

The cam rotates in a circular motion
The counterweights rotate in arc motion outwards.

All rotated circular parts spin at the same speed and direction, therefore given that the counterweights are connected to their respective base and this base rotates in a circular motion, when the cam is rotated the slots in the cam will never align to the vertical pins from either counterweight as those counterweights rotate in an arc motion.

Andy this is the flaw in my attempt to animate the mechanical advance and I didnt see this coming, its not a design flaw nor a tcw problem.  I just dont see how I can animate this aspect alone, all other animations for the distributor and vac advance are good.

Thankyou for looking into it.