Creating calculated pivot animations?

[Its Teh Patrick]

Hello all, new to the forum.

I have only been using SketchUp for a couple weeks and I have been designing bicycle frames. I would like to create an animated pivot sequence on this design.

I tried using a plugin for it, but it only does it in set scenes, where I would like the ability to move the swingarm and have the pivots move respectively as well as the shock compressing. Is there a plugin I have overlooked?

Thanks guys

[jgb]

I would love such a tool, but alas, as far as I know, there ain't no such tool for SU.

The closest I know of is Sketchyphysics. This will allow all sorts of joints and controls, BUT, does not allow you to set the position of parts in the drawing proper. You can only move parts via a run-time module within SU. Stop the run and everything reverts back to its start point.

It's a great tool, and can do a lot of wondrous stuff, but the learning curve is quite steep and quite frankly, although I loved it, I gave up on it.

So now, if I need to see an articulation I create layers for each position, and rotate copies of the component around the axis point, with each position on its own layer. Making the rotated part a component allows you to edit the part in any of its positions and the change ripples through all the positions. Great for fitting parts in complex geometries.