To Create a Motion Envelope
A motion envelope model represents the full motion of your mechanism during an analysis. To follow this procedure and create a motion envelope, you must be on the Playbacks dialog box. A recently-run result set must be available in the current session, or you can use a saved .pbk file.
1. Click
. The first time you create a motion envelope with a result set, a message box appears for you to confirm that you want to create a frame file named
result_set_name.fra.
2. Click Yes. The Create Motion Envelope dialog box opens.
3. In the Quality area, specify the quality level for creating the motion envelope model. Click the arrows or type an integer from 1-10 (the default value is 1).
4. Click
under
Components to remove subassemblies, parts, or bodies in your assembly from your motion envelope. All parts and subassemblies are selected by default.
5. To include any skeletons or quilts in your model, clear Ignore skeletons or Ignore quilts under Special handling.
6. In the Output format area of the dialog box, specify one of the following output file formats:
◦ Part (default)—Creates a standard part with normal geometry.
◦ Lightweight part—Creates a lightweight part with lightweight, faceted geometry.
◦ STL—Creates an .stl file.
◦ VRML—Creates a .vrl file.
7. In the Output file name area of the dialog box, accept the default file name or type a new name.
8. Select or clear Use default template (selected by default for Part and Lightweight Part file formats). This option is not available for STL or VRML file formats.
9. Click Preview to obtain a shaded representation of the triangles for the motion envelope. A message appears in the message area with the number of triangles produced.
10. To adjust the motion envelope model, click
beside
Invert triangle pairs. When you click the shaded representation, the triangle edges are highlighted. Click the edge between two triangles. These triangles are replaced with the other two triangles that make up the tetrahedron defined by the triangles' four vertices. Use this method if the automatically computed motion envelope does not accurately reflect your model's motion.
11. Click Undo last or Undo all to reverse any of the triangle inversions. When you have finished making adjustments, click Preview again, and then OK. The motion envelope is saved to the current working directory, and the source model remains in session as the current object.