Animations

Overview

In CGX, you can

• Animate the time history (sequence of datasets) or a single dataset.
• Displacement can be switched off, auto-scaled or set by the user.
• Define and start animations via the menu, by interactive commands or by executing command batch files (scripts)
• Save the animation to a gif movie.

An alternative to animations is interactive browsing through the time history with the keys PageDown and PageUP.

General Options

Command	Menu	Action
anim model [on|off]	Animate> Toggle Static Model Edges	Display of undeformed model edges
anim elem [on|off]	Animate> Toggle Static Element Edges	Display of undeformed element edges
anim real [on|off]	Animate> Toggle Real Displacements	Displacement scaling. Off: Autoscaling and sinusoidal time function. On: User defined scaling and rectified sinusoidal time function.
anim tune <value>	Animate> Tune Value	Displacement scaling factor. Affects both autoscaling and user defined scaling. In user scaling, overrides scal d <value>. Use anim tune 1 to reset the scaling factor.
anim time <value>	Animate> Time per Period	Time per cycle in seconds. This defines, how fast the animation runs.
anim steps <value>	Animate> Steps per Period	Number of frames per cycle. This defines, how smooth the animation runs.

Animation of a Single Dataset

Command	Action
ds <ds> a	Animate the dataset <ds> (just the displacements, no colouring). Autoscaling of displacements is activated.
ds <ds> a <e>	Animate the dataset <ds> colored by entity <e>. Autoscaling of displacements is activated.

Example: Animation of Mode Shapes

We assume that the displacements from a frequency analysis have been written to the .frd file.

Command	Action
ds 1 a	Animate the first mode shape
ds 1 e 4	Animate the dataset first mode shape colored by the displacement magnitude
anim tune 2	Double the amplitude of the animation to see it more clearly
PageDown|PageUp	Browse through the mode shapes stored in the results file.

Animation of a Series of Datasets

Command	Action
ds <ds> ah	Animate the time history starting with <ds> (just the displacements, no colouring). Autoscaling of displacements is activated.
ds <ds> ah <e>	Animate the time history starting with <ds> colored by entity <e>. Autoscaling of displacements is activated.

Saving the Animation to a File

Command	Action
movi frames auto	Record all frames of the immediately following animation command (ds) to file movie.gif