UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

Project 05 Solid Modeling Assignment 05 - MAE 377

Jonathan E. Jones - #3451-87370

10/15/2009

Project 05 was the introduction into the world of Pro/ENGINEER Design Animation. Utilizing assemblies from old Projects, our task was to animate them in terms of views, parts, and usability.

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Table of Contents 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3

2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................................................... 3

3 Results ................................................................................................................................................... 3

3.1 Part A ............................................................................................................................................. 3

3.2 Part B ............................................................................................................................................. 4

3.3 Part C ............................................................................................................................................. 4

3.4 Mini-Project .................................................................................................................................. 5

4 Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 5

5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 6

6 References ............................................................................................................................................ 6

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1 Introduction Project 05 is very much akin to its little brother, Project 04, at least in the sense that they look very

much alike. Where Projects 01-03 dealt with the recreation of models and the emphasis was laid

squarely on the shoulders of technical accuracy and completion, Project 04 and 05 staked its claim in

more of the aesthetic realm. Project 05 dealt with the animation of parts and assemblies, and it is just

as much of a joy as it sounds.

2 Problem Statement Project 05 was meant as an introductory assignment in the world of Pro/ENGINEER Design Animation.

Utilizing such viewing techniques as orientation timing, keyframe animating, transparency timings, and

making the whole movie one cohesive video. This is going to prove a very useful presentation tool and

not only for the sake that most human beings these days would rather watch a movie than read a few

pages. With the completion of this project, I will able to show how a product is assembled, any

conceivable view of the product, and even how the product works all within the framework of a sixty

seconds or less movie; a very useful skill indeed.

3 Results

3.1 Part A As always, Part A is was simplest part of the Project 05. Making this a slightly less time consuming

project, we used the pulley assembly we created in Part F of Project 02. As the introduction to the

introductory project, the only task required here was the need to save four different orientations within

ProE. This was all done so that the movie would zoom in on the model and watch it rotate through a

180 degree rotation. Following the Pro/E Design Animation Tutorial posted on UBLearns made this

process entirely painless and after less than a minute of rendering, the movie was complete. 1

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 1: (a), (b), and (c) are screenshots of the video made in Part A, views 1, 2, and 3 respectively.

1 As it would make little to no sense to place the movie directly in this report, it and the following movies can be

found at the following address: http://sites.google.com/site/jonathanjonescaddesign/project_05

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3.2 Part B Where Part A dealt with motion of the entire assembly body, B took a more “part by part” approach. In

this section of Project 05, I was taught how to take an assembled product, explode and “unexplode” the

view; all via part by part terms. In other words, I could take an assembly, and step by step dismantle

and assemble it one piece at a time. It is actually not a complicated process at all, as it utilizes only one

ProE tool and basically only clicking and dragging.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 2: Screenshots made from the video made in Part B

3.3 Part C Part C was basically a conglomeration of the skills I had learned in Parts A and B of this project. I now

had to create a movie file that did not only zoom in from a distance away, but simultaneously explode

the view followed by a reassembly. Now this may seem like a complicated process, as it sure seems like

a movie file that will actually appear like it took a lot of work to create. In actuality, as basic as the

concept is of combining Parts A and B, that’s exactly how basic Part C turned out to be. Mapping over

the animation created in Part B (the exploded to unexploded view) and saving it to a different file name

took a number of mere seconds. All that remained now was adding the views at the specified at the

timeline. At this point, I didn’t even have to recreate the views I made in Part A, as they were carried

over from the completion of Part A. Part C turned out to be quite a breeze.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 3: (a), (b), (c) are screenshots of the video made in Part C

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3.4 Mini-Project The Mini-Project, as seems to be the theme with all the previous projects, incorporated all of the skills I

learned in Parts A-C. We had to zoom in on the cellphone, rotate it 360 degrees, explode the view,

rotate it again, unexploded the view, and as an added bonus, zoom in again on the phone, and

alternatively make the screen, front cover, and keypad become transparent and opaque again. This

didn’t prove to be too difficult, as it was just a repetition of the previous steps in Parts A-C. The

transparency feature worked exactly like the “view at time” feature, so that wasn’t too much of a

struggle either.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4: (a), (b), and (c) are screenshots of the unrendered video made in the Mini Project

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5: (a), (b), and (c) are screenshots of the unrendered video made in the Mini Project

4 Discussion I have a bone to pick with ProENGINEER Wildfire 4.0. I know that making a video where I can show a

plethora of views, any and every part both within and outside the product, and showing how the

product works is both necessary and entertaining. I know that it is only a computer program, and that I

only go to a SUNY university in a time of nationwide economic turmoil. I know that don’t ask for a lot

when I decided to go to the University at Buffalo. But I also know that I do not have nearly an hour to

spend waiting for a video file of less than a minute to render. Sure, I can create the video without

photorendering the images, but hasn’t the last two projects centered almost entirely on appearance and

aesthetics? I feel like I would be betraying my purpose if I aimed low and only created the easy but just-

not-as-pretty movie file. Also, if you the reader takes the time to watch my videos on the website listed

on page 2, you may notice that the final rendering of the cell phone assembly (the photorendered

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version) doesn’t include the final 13 seconds of the video, the part where the lens, keypad, and front

cover go transparent and then back to opaque. The unrendered version contains the entire process just

fine, but for some reason ProE deemed the rendered version unworthy of the final 13 seconds. You’re

losing major points with me, PTC, and I am not appreciating it one bit.

5 Conclusion Aside from the occasional setbacks listed in Section 4 of this report, I thoroughly enjoyed creating the

movies necessary for the completion of Project 05. This project taught me very valuable presentation

skills, something that will take my three dimensional CAD from a lifeless JPG to a fully fledged movie

representation. I can now show unlimited amounts of views of every single one of my parts, even show

how my product is designed to work. In retrospect, these should turn out to be very useful skills indeed.

6 References

1.) Lee, Leng Feng. (2008) [Online]. Pro/E Design Animation Tutorial. Available:

https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fbl

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