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If you run the animation at this point, you may see that the scope head makes some unexpected movement, and a yellow line appears to the left of the change bar for the part. To fix this, click the Calculate button next to the Play button.

Copying and mirroring motion

The animation is essentially done at this point, except that now the stethoscope needs to go back into the holder and it has to close. You don't have to manually create all the steps to close the device, although you could if you wanted to. It is more efficient to simply copy and reverse the paths that you have already made.

To copy both sets of motion — the top opening and the head sliding out — drag a marquee window around the key points to select them all, and then Ctrl+drag them to the 6-second mark. Notice that this creates the situation shown in Figure 23.26. If you play the animation at this point, it is not at all what you want. It simply stacks the same motion on top of the original motion; you want it to be reversed.

FIGURE 23.26

Copying motion of parts

With the newly copied key points still selected, right-click one of them and select Reverse Path. Notice that this now shows symmetrical key points.

Adjusting the speed of actions

The animation is almost complete, but now you notice that it would be better if the second half of the animation went by faster than the first half. To do this, move the key points on the right side of a change bar toward the left. You might want to move both key points for the top part closing so that it starts closer to the time when the scope head is back inside the holder. You could even make some of the motion overlap, so the top starts closing before the scope head is fully inside.

Again, if you see a strange effect such as the scope head not going all the way back to where it belongs, trying clicking the Calculate button again. Calculate essentially rebuilds the animation after changes.

To make the motion a little smoother, right-click in an empty space inside the timeline area, and choose Select All; then right-click one of the key points and select Interpolation Mode. Click the Ease in/Ease out option. Click Calculate again to watch the smoother animation.

If you want variable speed, say, for the scope head coming out of the holder (for example, it starts coming out slowly and then speeds up), you need to add at least one more key point. To do this, position the timebar to the left of the middle of the first scope head change bar, and click Place Key. This adds a key point in the existing change bar. This is shown in Figure 23.27. Then move the key point to the right. Make sure the new key point uses the Ease in/Ease out interpolation mode. Recalculate, and run the animation again.

FIGURE 23.27

Adding and moving a key point in an existing change bar

If you decide that the entire animation is too fast or too slow, you can also adjust this easily. Drag the right-most key point on the top row with the Alt key depressed. This scales the entire animation up or down.

Outputting the animation

Once you are happy with the animation, click the Save Animation toolbar button. This brings up the Save Animation to File dialog box, shown in Figure 23.28. The options for output formats are *.avi, or a *.bmp or *.tga series of still images. You could combine the still images to make an animated GIF to use on a website. Other types of output, such as Flash or QuickTime, are not available directly from the SolidWorks software. Movie format converters are available on the web for this purpose.

The options for the renderer are simply the SolidWorks screen or PhotoView 360. This example uses RealView and the SolidWorks screen renderer, which provides sufficient quality for your purposes. The main advantages of PhotoView 360 over RealView are that it offers a better choice of backgrounds, anti-aliasing, and more shadow control.

FIGURE 23.28

Saving output data for your animation

Looking at other options