Animating in Mechanica

[JonathanHodgson]

Is there a neat way in Mechanica to run a series of analyses iterating a parameter (so a sensitivity study, so far) and then to set up an identical results view for each value of the parameter and assemble them into an animation?

Our gear design software guys have just updated their profile export options, and they think it would be cool if I were to run some contact analysis on a gear pair with tip relief... it definitely would be if I could produce an animation showing the stress varying as the gears mesh.

Do I need to be considering Mechanism? Can I do this in WF4 or are there shiny new features in Creo that would help?

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[SylvainA.]

I've done it yesterday using.... powerpoint

You can create a result template and use it for each "iteration", exporting the resut window as a jpeg picture and inserting them into a powerpoint document. You can then "animate" the slide show by setting up the time between two slides.

Little bit tricky, but it works fine. I never have really tried to find a better way to do that...

[JonathanHodgson]

Lateral thinking - I like it!

Is a "result template" different to a saved results window (.rwd)? And are you just manually updating the parameter and re-running the analysis each time?

[SylvainA.]

A result window belongs to an analysis results, then you have to overwrite each of your "iteration" by running the same analysis several times.

With a result template, you can create (or rename in Mechanica) each "iteration" analysis (e.g. analysis1, analysis2, etc...), keep them all on your hard drive and choose to display each analysis results using one single template.

I also thought that, in CREO2, constraints are time dependants.

You could try to add a displacement constraint to one of the gear to allow the gear set to rotate. You'll have to set as many time steps as required by your animation.

I'm not 100% sure it will work because I'm using CREO 2 for one week only (I'm still using WF5 for my daily business).

[DenisJaunin]

Hello, Jonathan,

There is a demonstration of the crash of a clip on page 4 of the link below.

I do not know if this is what you are looking for.

But it would be interesting to study the file to the operating principle.

Cordially.

Denis.

http://www.3hti.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/Top-10-Reasons-to-Upgrade-to-Creo-Parametric.pdf