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Applying animation to a joint

Revolute and slider joints can be driven through their range from the Joints panel. Nothing is written to the file: the animation is a viewport tool.

In the viewport​

  1. In the Joints panel, right-click the revolute row and choose Animate….

    Joint row menu

  2. The animate bar appears at the bottom of the viewport: Start and End angles, Steps, and a Playback mode. The start and end are seeded from the joint's .limits(), 0° and 180° here; a joint without limits animates one full turn (a slider travels 10 units from where it is).

    Animate bar

  3. Set Playback to Reciprocate and click Play. The swing leaf closes onto the fixed leaf and opens again; Loop restarts from Start each time, Single stops at End.

    The hinge closing

  4. Play toggles to Pause while running. Stop returns the leaf to where it was when the bar opened, and ✕ closes the bar.

The same controls work in the embedded viewer: render the hinge below, then hover the revolute row in its Joints panel and press its play button.

The assembled hinge, ready to animate

The same drive is available on slider joints, in document units of travel along the joint's Z axis. Editing Start or End while paused restarts the sweep from Start on the next Play.

Where to go next​

You have built parts with constrained sketches and 3D features, given them connectors, exported one, assembled them and driven a joint. The reference sections go deeper on each:

  • Sketching for every sketch tool and constraint.
  • 3D Operations for the Add / Remove / New modes of every feature, thin walls, and the selection filters.
  • Part for parameters and exposed geometry, and Assembly for the other joint types and sub-assemblies.
  • User Interface for a map of the workspace.