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Note

To greatly simplify this task, you can create an offset plane and sketch an ellipse or circle on the plane rather than using the 3D spline. The 3D spline is intended to give you the most control and flexibility.

The camera will be attached to this spline. You might also want to have a target point for the camera to follow as it goes around the path. You could place a sketch point inside the joint between the Tower and Arm parts. If the assembly or even a part origin is in a convenient location, you can also use this as a place to point the camera.

Once the path exists, exit the sketch and insert a new camera. You can insert a camera by switching to the DisplayManager, the multicolored ball next to the FeatureManager and ConfigurationManager tabs. Then switch to the third icon under the top tabs, which is for lights and cameras. Now right-click the Cameras folder and select Add Camera. Figure 23.22 shows the PropertyManager for the camera.

Notice that when you insert the camera, the SolidWorks graphics window splits into two viewports. The left viewport is your view of the camera, the model, and their surroundings. The right viewport is the view through the camera.

Use the Target Point selection box to aim the camera at a point on the Robot Tower part. If you aim the camera at a moving part, the motion of the camera will seem unnatural, unless the part is moving smoothly. For this assembly, you might consider using a dummy part in the assembly to aim the camera at so that it is moving in a jerky fashion, following a jaw, for example. You can use a part just floating in space, but generally moving left, right, up, or down as needed without being rigidly connected to any single part of the assembly.

Attach the camera to the spline by selecting the spline in the first Camera Position selection box. If you are at T=0 (the first time key point), make sure that the percent position is set to zero.

To get the camera to move around the spline, move the timebar to a position such as 0.4 second, edit the Camera item in the MotionManager (right-click it inside the Lights, Cameras and Scene folder found only in the MotionManager, not in the assembly FeatureManager), and select the Properties option. Then move the Percent slider under Camera Position to about 25 percent. Do this as many times as you need to go all the way around.

If parts of the model go out of the field of view, or you feel that the camera is too far away or too close to the model, you can move the camera or change the lens. To move the camera, exit the camera PropertyManager and edit the 3D sketch.

FIGURE 23.22

The Camera PropertyManager

Note

Remember that when editing unconstrained 3D sketches, it is best to do it from orthogonal views. Any points that you drag move in the plane of the screen. The best way to edit the size of the spline is to view it from the Top view, and drag out individual spline points.

Going beyond 100 percent or 360 degrees

If you take the animation around more than 360 degrees, you will need to use a workaround to get it to work correctly. For example, if you use the Percent slider, and go 0-25-50-75-100 and then 25 percent, the animation will reverse direction between 100 and 25. The way to make this happen so that the animation maintains continuity is to place keys at both 100 and 0 close enough to one another that the time difference is less than the frame rate of the animation. The frame rate is set in the Motion Study Properties, the icon on the far-right side of the MotionManager toolbar. For a finished animation, the frame rate could be in the neighborhood of 30 frames per second (fps), which means the time for one frame would be 1/30 second, or about 0.03 second. Therefore, if 100 percent happens at 2 seconds, you could put 0 percent at 2.01 seconds and the transition would never be seen. This workaround is used widely by people who know the software well.

The same sort of tactic works if you have to go beyond 360 degrees. You have to use the zoom tools in the lower-right corner of