Mechanism drawing animation :

We present to you some movies obtained as a result of the application of a special technology for the animation of drawings.

You can watch the following movies:

 Internal Combustion Engine of a Soviet saloon car

Manipulator for transporting flasks in a foundry shop

Nozzle of a hydraulic turbine

Heavy duty chassis of a Western car
The technology of mechanism drawing animation

The drawing which has been animated is a standard designer assembly drawing of a mechanism prepared in AutoCAD, normally for other purposes (as a rule it a part of the designer's documentation). The core of the technology is a special software product ParaDis in the AutoCAD environment developed by the "Progma" company. This product allows the automatic transformation of any drawing with the purpose of satisfying dimensions prescribed by the user. The geometric configuration of the drawing is preserved in the process.

The work of animation consists of the following stages:

  • 1) Distinguishing "rigid" bodies.
    The designer distinguishes separate parts of the mechanism on the original drawing. These parts behave a "rigid bodies" during the course of work. Such parts can only move and rotate as a single entity. The distinguishing such parts is effected by declaring the collection of all geometric primitives that form the relevant part to be a block of AutoCAD.
  • 2) Nomination of control dimension(s).
    A control dimension is prescribed (or if necessary, several such dimensions) using standard AutoCAD means. The text in the dimension label should be a formula containing the control parameters. In particular, the whole text can consist of one letter (the name of the dimension).
  • 3) Obtaining frames of the movie.
    Giving various values to the parameters in the formula for control dimensions and using the ParaDis program, we obtain all the frames of the movie as separate precise drawings.