I want advice on how to animate an overhead garage door with native dynamic components.

Is it a rollup door or your more typical residential garage door?

Typical residential garage door

This animation is done using the Ruby API. However you will note that the garage does does not rollup along the track as it would in real life. I could have attempted to program that but the crazy kinematics involved is more than I wanted to tackle. I have no idea if this sort of thing is even pos…

I have actually thought about this problem quite a bit just because I like these kinds of mathematical/physics challenges. Done properly one would animate each door panel as a separate body. Each panel would move vertically at first then at a certain point it would rotate and then it would move ho…

Animating a garage door wouldn’t be difficult. I think doing it as a DC might be a big challenge. I did a sort of similar animation for some shelves. Obviously there’s only be a single up or down motion. [Imgur]

panel door animation 2.skp (27.7 KB) not perfect but close enough if track indicators removed [image] medeek: could have attempted to program that but the crazy kinematics involved is more than I wanted to tackle. so true

This isn’t perfect either but again it is close enough. [garagedoor_opening2]

Serious question - who needs animated garage doors in their CDs? I get having either open / closed (I do that a lot with Nanawalls, sliders, and barn doors) - but I don’t need it to actually moved up and down the track like it would in real life.

Sometimes it is not a matter of if you “should” you do it but more a matter of “can” you do it. I just thought it might be an interesting challenge. As it turned out it was actually easier to program than the logic for opening and closing of bi-fold closet doors, that one actually made my head hur…

[image] medeek: Sometimes it is not a matter of if you “should” you do it but more a matter of “can” you do it. Ahhh. Ok. I thought this was a feature request / new addition and I was like … why? But yes, the ‘can I do it?’ is a legit reason.

Animation of an Overhead Garage Door

SketchUp Dynamic Components

pcmoor December 20, 2025, 9:55pm 7

panel door animation 2.skp (27.7 KB)

not perfect but close enough if track indicators removed

so true

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Animation of an Overhead Garage Door

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