Hi guys and gals,
I am modelling a telescopic beam on 3 further axes.
When I set the on-click behaviour, with 4 states, it doesn’t matter how I order them, the beams ends up badly aligned with the y axis. It’s very strange … can anyone help me, please?
Thanks!
Beam.skp (194.6 KB)
I think you would find it much easier if you align the axes of your components with the model axes - your main beam component has the X axis in the negative blue direction.
Also, it’s easier to keep track of what is what if you use named components instead of anonymous groups.
After the first Animate rotation, the bounding box of the whole model hasn’t moved, so the Y axis isn’t where you perhaps expected it to be - normal to the original X axis of the model…
And some of the moves shift the whole assembly along the X axis.
You might have to think about doing the Animate action in stages, applied sometimes to the whole, sometimes to the individual telescoping parts of the beam?
But I’m not an expert on DCs - this is just a few observations about where some of you difficulties might be coming from, rather than a solution, I’m afraid.
You need to contain each part within another, like fingers within a hand, the hand within the fore arm, that inside the arm, that inside the upper body…Then information is passed down like a nerve from the body to the fingers, through each level of nesting.
Parts (groups, components) can be moved or dragged in outliner or you can use cut and then “paste in place”.
Another problem is you referenced the wrong part to rotate around Z
I am not sure what the movement in X-axis is for, deleted this for now to show the movement without that, if the device is meant to move horizontally then model a trolley then mount the scope, then move the trolley. Then it would make sense to me.
animate works from the closes level to the parent, if not the parent. So any other movement must be referenced, whether up or down the “nerve”
Anyway its a good start to your DC experience
Beam.skp (227.5 KB)
Thank you, John … yes - I see precisely what you’re talking about. Thank you very much for you time and analysis! As I was falling asleep last night, I realised that it had to be something to do with the axes on each sub component … … 
Many thanks!!! Yes … I see my mistakes now … first time with DC; I am a mechanical engineer, and have a coding background, so I should really know better … the light of day makes things clearer … again - many thanks for your time and analysis …
