Being able to open doors and windows interactively inside your Sketchup model can give you a better understanding of sightlines between internal rooms while delivering that extra “wow factor” to a presentation. In this tip I show you how to animate objects like these in your 3d model with a simple click of a button by using embedded commands inside your components.
Dynamic components can be used to assign pre-programmed commands and operations to an object, allowing it to change within a set of customisable rules. You can add dynamic properties to any components that you make and in this video I look at the ANIMATE command that works when inserted as an onClick behaviour.
In the video I go through programming a basic swing and sliding door and then use the interact tool to execute the functions. There is a little bit of pseudo coding involved which can turn people off, but this example is very basic and the steps I go through here can be followed by anyone.
It should be noted also that there are a couple of bugs in the dynamic component plugin which can be a bit of a nuisance and I point these out in the video.
The onClick commands that I use are:
ANIMATE(“RotZ”,0,90) - Rotates our object around its origin axis by 90 degrees and then returns it back to the 0 degrees state with a subsequent click.
ANIMATE(“X”,0,-86) - Moves our object from its origin axis minus 86 centimetres along the X axis and then returns it back to its previous state with a subsequent click.
You can also create multiple command combinations, ie. rotate and move together, by separating each command with a semi-colon (;) inside the dialog box.
Watch the video and then have a go yourself!
If you have access to my intermediate online courses, there is a bonus video about animating with dynamic components that goes much further and has an example file that you can download!