Animating Parameters

Catia/DP does not have any controls built in to let you animate a set of parameters in the same way you could do in Maya or XSI so we will have to do this in an alternative way; iterating through a design table that contains enough options to create a smooth animation and take a screen-shot for each option. To help you with this task we have put together a little automation script.

1. Download the script file and folder and extract it to you root c:/. The newly extracted folder should contain one file, DesignTableScreenCap.catvbs, which is the macro script, and one folder frames where all the screen-caps will be placed.
2. Open your DP project with the design table loaded.
3. Rename the design table “AnimationTable”
4. Press Alt + F8 to open the Macros window
   
5. Click Macro libraries…, select Directories from the drop-down menu and then Add existing library… and select the c:\macros folder
   
6. Once the directory is loaded the Macros window should look like this:
   
7. Running the script: Provided the folder was uncompressed to the right place and the design table has been renamed you are now ready to run the script and generate the screen-shots. Select the DesignTableScreenCap.catvbs hit Run. DP will begin to iterate through all the 1200 “frames” in the design table and write these to c:\macros\frames\
8. Compressing the video: (This step is optional → we can do the compression of frames into video to help you save time) There are a lot of tools to assemble the frames into a video clip and if you are familiar with working with video pick whichever tool is easiest. However, a good and free one is VirtualDub. Additionally you will need a suitable video codec to to compress the video-stream.

• You can hide both the tree and the Compass in the View menu in DP
• Setting the screen background to a single color in stead of a gradient makes the compression easier and the video file smaller
• Turn on anti-aliasing of lines in Tools → Options