Animation Setting - Ping pong vs. Simple

[Former Member]

I have multiple animations in my file. There is one that I want to ping pong back and forth. The rest I want to play through one time in a procedure. It seems like if I select one or the other (ping pong or simple) it sets that setting for all animations in the file.

Is there a  way to have one animation set to ping pong and the others set to simple?

Thanks,

Dean

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dean, I gave this a try , but so far have not been able to achieve what you are looking for. Also when you create two individual animation tracks, the start/stop cyclic is applied to both tracks when you bundle or merge them. It might be a case of having to make a longer track for the ping - pong and copy and paste the keys repeatedly

Lets see if anyone else has a go at this ...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Sarah. At least I know I'm (hopefully) not doing something wrong then. I'm looking forward to see what SAP add and fixes to this program. It does a lot of things right and has a lot of potential.

[Former Member]

Hi Dean,

First off  the settings Ping Pong and Simple found on the Animations Control Panel shown below are really only used for reviewing or playing animations individually.

There are many ways to go about doing what you want but the easiest would be  to control your animations using Steps. Some animations like you said you may want to repeat for a while and others you may want to play thru.

Example for creating the Ping Pong effect may look like this.

1. Create the animation. Lets say Removing Screws
2. Create a step with the view that you want
3. Right click on the step and go to Properties and then to the Animation Tab
4. Use the Add button to add the animation to the step and add it 4 times if you want it to ping pong back and forth twice or more if you want.   We are going to reverse every other one as shown in the picture below by selecting the animation and clicking the Reverse Animation button.

Now when you play this step it will play the animations you added creating the Ping Pong effect that you want and allowing you to control how many times.  And now if you want to have another animation playing after this one is done you create another step and add your animation.

Just remember Steps do three main things

• Play animations
• Control Visibility of Parts
• Store the default Camera View at the time the step is created or updated

If you have any other questions or this didn't answer yours let me know.

Jason Dickerson