Chain

[hong12891]

I am kinda familiar with the animation but not the best at it.. Our team wants to animate a chain but if I am animating in the presenation file we have to select every peice. Can someone help me with the animation of complicated things like chains?

[Eric Scheuing]

It's best not to bother trying to animate parts that don't move in a circular pattern. Believe me, animating chain and belts (especially belts) is more work than it's worth. Just don't zoom in on it ;)

[Dan Zollman]

I think there have been some threads on this in the past (or maybe they were just about modeling chain and not animating). Some time soon I plan to see if I can figure out a good way to do it. I'll post that here if I succeed.

[negfrequency]

It's best not to bother trying to animate parts that don't move in a circular pattern. Believe me, animating chain and belts (especially belts) is more work than it's worth. Just don't zoom in on it ;)

i totally agree. Ive trifled my time with it, and even if there were a way your best bet is to just make a stiff piece and say its moving. generally there are cooler things your going to want to show on your robot in the thirty seconds you have anyway

on another note- i dont feel like starting a new thread- can someone give me the due date for the autodesk inventor award?

[Dan Zollman]

This is what I found in a search:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=510142&postcount=5
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=246060&postcount=9

And this was done in the old Animator (http://www.sdotson.com/animator.asp) add-in:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=383689&postcount=10

on another note- i dont feel like starting a new thread- can someone give me the due date for the autodesk inventor award?

It's on FIRSTbase - March 8.

[JasJ002]

It's possible to do chain correctly and without presentation. I researched it a while ago. It was done by a dutschman a couple months back. I'm sure if you googled it enough you would find it.

[Robert Thacker-]

Well, animating it may be cool and all (if you have the time to do it), but it's not important in displaying the final design. There are plenty of ways to display your robot without animating it. It's one of those "cool if we do it," but not important.

[Ben Martin]

Until the end of the season and we're preparing for the Inventor Award, we usually just represent the chain with belts or we just don't include it at all. Later, or if the design requires a critical dimension, we'll model the chain.

As Robert said, modeling chain is not critical for design, but after it's done, the robot looks awesome in Inventor.

[Dancing_Chuck]

Bwahahahaaha! The chain is EVIL!!!