A little downtime play.
I decided to animate it before I got the screws and a few plumbing bits modeled. Fortunately in SketchUp it will stay together anyway.
9 Likes
scene animation or other method?
Scenes and tags. 
Shoot I was hoping to see Mr. Muncaster oscillating…… Another very cool model and animation Mr. Dave !
LOL!
Thank you sir.
A cut away version.
5 Likes
Any chance of a quick tutorial Dave. I have been trying to animate with scenes and tags without success. If I can master the basic principle I have a little project in mind 
It’s actually pretty straightforward. Make copies of the components in successive locations. In the case of the steam engine a lot of it is done with radial arrays along with some move operations. Then each copy of the components gets a different tag assigned to them. Finally you make all but one tag invisible, create a scene, increment the visible tag, create a scene, rinse and repeat.
Here is a screen grab showing a few of the tags visible at the same time. I used Color by tag to illustrate what objects have the same tag.
So then Scene 1 has only Tag 0 visible. ( I let SketchUp name the tags for this because I was lazy, er… efficient. 
) Scene 2 has Tag 1 visible, and so on. Here are the first three scenes.
Of course the camera could move between scenes if you want.
Hope that makes some sort of sense.
2 Likes
Thanks very much for taking the trouble to post that Dave - it is much appreciated, and I now understand how you have animated your model.
When I was 18 (a very long time ago 
) I had a certain motorcycle that I absolutely loved. I recently had the idea of creating a fully animated cutaway model of its 3 cylinder 2 stroke engine and gearbox assembly in Sketchup which is going to be my next project. I have just managed to get hold of the original maintenance manuals which have lots of photos and drawings for me to work from. It will take me ages to complete as I don’t have a lot of free time, but I have high hopes for what I can create. Thanks again for your help.
2 Likes
Very good. Sounds like an interesting project. It would be cool to see your progress as you go. You might consider starting a thread here in the Gallery to show your progress.
Great idea - I will do that - I am sure I will need lots of help
1 Like
H1 ? Or H2, or Water Buffalo?
Hi @endlessfix
I had an H1 and an H2, but my favourite by a mile was the S3 400 which I purchased new in 1976.
I still have dreams about that bike - maybe because it was my first brand new motorbike and I was so excited to get it.
Its the S3 engine I will be trying to model, with a fully animated engine and fully working gearbox if possible 
Ahh. the S3, the little brother, but still probably a hand grenade of an engine I bet. I’ve never seen one, only made a couple of years right? Look forward to seeing your model progress.