Motion Skeletons

[dgschaefer]

I'm curious if anyone has links to any more detailed tutorials or use cases on motion skeletons or any personal experiences they can share.  I've seen a few YouTube videos as well as the eLearning topics in the section on AAX.  I'm interested in more info, however. 

Some questions I have:

• Can there be more than one sketch in a motion skeleton?
• How can I integrate a motion skeleton with other skeletons?
• Can I use surfaces or other non-curve geometry with a motion skeleton?

The examples I've seen are simple, one cylinder engines which illustrates the power of the concept, but doesn't give much insight on integrating it within a more complex assembly where I need to control outer surface contours, part lines, screw boss positions and motion in more than one plane.

How are people using them in the real world?

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[vzak]

Doug, I am not sure if it adds more to youtube's that you saw, but just in case :

http://www.e-cognition.net/pages/MotionSkel.html

• Can there be more than one sketch in a motion skeleton?
  / sure, you can put as many sketches as you want in Design Skeleton inside motion skeleton assembly. When body skeletons are later created curves connections are analysed regardless are they from same sketch or from different ones. So in general you can create any 3D structure to simulate real mechanism.
• How can I integrate a motion skeleton with other skeletons?
  / first thing you create regular Design Skeleton inside Motion Skeleton assembly. This Design Skeleton can contain both surfaces / curves that you will later user for top down in a regular way, and Sketches for motion purpoces - both can be controlled by layers and not really interfere with each other.
• Can I use surfaces or other non-curve geometry with a motion skeleton?
  / actually not, even non-sketched Curves will not make it. Sketch has the plane that is used in creation of connections. You may note that Body Skeleton has 2 type of features in it : " External Copygeom that copies selected curves, and Axis features created through end points that are used in automatically created connections. Creation of these axes requires sketch plane for normal definition.

[dgschaefer]

I had seen the e-cognition page as well as a couple of YouTube videos.  The videos I found had no sound, so there was no elaboration on what was happening.

Your short explanation has shed more light on the motion skeleton theory than the PTCLearning class or any of the videos I've found.  It looks like a powerful feature that is poorly documented.

Thanks

[fguertin]

sorry, but i have had the same problem for many years.

the ptc support is too light to allow a powerful use of complicated motion skeletons.

i have sent a question to ptc communiity and no answer.

i think that motion skeleton by PTC is a teaching function ( look at precision LMS ) which is not used by the designers or very rarely.

we can't work with sub assemblies easily, only parts :  this is a great problem for a designer.

the automatic recognition of the connections is not successful.

you have to use personal tools ....

regards

Fguertin