Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

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bejant
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by bejant »

romartin wrote:Thank you bejant.
You're most welcome; for me your animation and real-life engines are awesome.
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by romartin »

Following bejant's indications I downloaded CamStudio and Handbrake from sourceforge onto my Win8.1 notebook and, after a bit of learning, produced a first brief video showing the animation of the dual cylinder version of my Vertical Engine. Here is a link to the mp4 file on DropBox. Thank you again bejant!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kc70g97lj7xqs ... n.mp4?dl=0

In the meantime I have produced three A4 pages showing simple views with dimensions of the more than 20 types of part needed for building the reversing mecchanisms. I tried to use the technique suggested in at least two threads started by newbie FreeCADers like me who had made a 3D model but were having difficulty with generating the production documentation. The replies in these threads admit that FreeCAD's current support for generating documentation from 3D model is rather weak and suggest using FreeCAD's Drawing or Document WB to create Page objects with the needed views without dimensions and export these pages as DXF files and then use a 2D CAD program like LibreCAD to add the dimensions and the text. The approach worked well enough for my home workshop purposes but my three documents would not be usable by an external fabrication facility - information is missing due, as far as I can see, to limitations in FreeCAD's ability to export to DXF.
  • Hidden lines, which show on the FreeCAD screen, dont turn up on the LibreCAD screen. So, for example, the depth of a blind hole or a recess doesn't show on any projection.
  • The projection of circles onto a view plane not normal or parallel to the plane containing the circle can produce an ellipse with the wrong inclination. This makes it impractical to show isometric views of any part containing features with circular edges.
I love FreeCAD's marvelous support for 3D modelling and animation. But, for many potential user's, once the 3D model is completed, it must be used as the reference source for generating production documents. So I feel that improving FreeCAD's support for this perhaps unglamorous activity is very very important for FreeCAD's future. Please dont take this as a criticism.

A final remark relating to the first post of this thread. As reported there, when making the 3D model I gave the individual models of single parts increasing values for their X and Z Placement values in order that there would be no overlapping when viewing all the parts together from any of the six standard viewpoints (Front, Left, Back,---). This was a technique I had used with models done with AutoCAD to facilitate the production of the production documentation. However with FreeCAD it proved to be a mistake because I found great difficulty in locating (X and Y values) the particular part I wanted for a particular Drawing View. So in the end I gave Placements of (0,0,0) to all the parts and used their Visibility attributes to make sure that only one was visible at a time.

Ian
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microelly2
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by microelly2 »

When you look at yoriks bloghttp://yorik.uncreated.net/guestblog2014.html there are great and complex blueprints with dimensioning and a lot of documentation.

FreeCAD has utilities to generate 2D documentation. But the problem is that we dont know this when we start modeling.
It is possible to generate dimensioning objects and texts in 3D Space and map it to the drawings by draft tools.
I have tested it and was satified in most cases. You can create standard views and views from arbitrary viewpoints and you can create and fill multiple drawings and fill them with different information from inside of a singe freecad file.

its possilbe to show hidden line to format with different sizes and colors

here some of my examples

http://freecadbuch.de/doku.php?id=blog: ... _zeichnung
http://freecadbuch.de/doku.php?id=blog: ... t_zusammen
http://freecadbuch.de/doku.php?id=blog: ... grenzungen
http://freecadbuch.de/doku.php?id=blog: ... []=schnitt


at the beginning my idea was to use librecad too, but now I think freecad is powerful enough. I do not need a second tool.
the drawing dimensioning workbench is a very good addon for smaller projects.

the second thing you are right:
in complex designs draft clone and part compound are the best friends. After I have designed a part I make a clone and hide the original. With clones and compounds I can move around and assembly. Its easier to make a redesign if you reuse a clone.
For drawing a clone is useful too. You can rotate and cut it to get special views of your part.
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by romartin »

Thank you microelly2for this information. I did try to use the Draft WB but gave up quite quickly because instintively I didn't like the idea of having to insert the dimensions into the 3D model. I will try again bearing in mind what you say.
Ian
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microelly2
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by microelly2 »

Its not a problem to have dimensions inside the 3d space
create a group and put all your dimensions, texts and helper lines into it.
you can than hide and unhide the complete group with the space tab.
so you can create a complex documentation space
and at the end you create multiple drawings from one file.


see my example file
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abdullah
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by abdullah »

microelly2 wrote: Fri Dec 19, 2014 8:32 pm The realtime animation runs with tranquillizer set to 0.1 sec to see the single steps.
It is possible to apply a tranquilizer only to one rotator, but not to another rotator under the same manager?

I can drag and drop a rotator under a tranquilizer, but it seems to stop working...
tranquilizer.png
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Another question. I want to rotate all the objects of a group. What is the easiest way to apply all those objects to a rotator?
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microelly2
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by microelly2 »

abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 24, 2018 5:39 pm
microelly2 wrote: Fri Dec 19, 2014 8:32 pm The realtime animation runs with tranquillizer set to 0.1 sec to see the single steps.
It is possible to apply a tranquilizer only to one rotator, but not to another rotator under the same manager?

I can drag and drop a rotator under a tranquilizer, but it seems to stop working...
No, it is only a sleep in the main manager loop,
if you want to have another time for subelements there is a speeder - I will make a video to demonstrate how to use it.


Another question. I want to rotate all the objects of a group. What is the easiest way to apply all those objects to a rotator?
I will extend the code to apply to a list of Links or the elements of a group.
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by abdullah »

microelly2 wrote: Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:05 pm No, it is only a sleep in the main manager loop,
if you want to have another time for subelements there is a speeder - I will make a video to demonstrate how to use it.
Great!!

I have tried to use the speeder. I have followed one of your videos in Youtube, but the interface now is different:
speeder.png
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I am not sure either what "targets" and "followers" are.

I welcome your video because I do not understand how to use it. :D


microelly2 wrote: Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:05 pm I will extend the code to apply to a list of Links or the elements of a group.
Thanks! :D
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microelly2
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by microelly2 »

phpBB [video]


targets and followers are still not implemented.
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microelly2
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Re: Animated 3D models of Steam Engines

Post by microelly2 »

Placer can now have a group as target or can be the group of parts itself.


https://github.com/microelly2/Animation ... f75de2bb73
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