Creating free empty space between two planes in Solidworks - cad

I have rotary encoder with RGB LED illuminated Shaft (Bourns PEL12T-4226F-S1024) and I am designing volume knob using Solidworks 2013, that will be used with this encoder. Now, I've managed to design basic shape and made extrusions, then add a hole for potentiometer shaft, that is all ok. But, between potentiometer hole upper plate and global upper plate I need empty space, so the knob will transfer illuminated colors. How do I add empty space between two planes using Solidworks? And how do I "cut" slots from chamfered surface, so the illumination can be visible?

This is very easy to do.
Click on the Cut Extrude symbol and then click on the top face on the model and select the top view and now u can see the center of the knob hole click circle and click on that and draw the circle define it and extrude it all the way.

Related

how to rotate the yellow cube towards the car?

how to rotate the yellow cube towards the car ? I have a spinning camera, I think this is the case
Are you trying to do with with code? I remind you StackOverflow is for programming. For other game related things there is gamedev.stackexchange.com.
If you are doing this with code - and given that I don't know how the scene tree looks like - I suggest using look_at. Something like this (code for the Camera):
look_at(car.global_transform.origin, car.global_transform.basis.y)
There car is a reference to the car. I can't tell you how to get one without looking at the scene tree, beyond that you can probably use get_node. So car.global_transform.origin is the position of the car in global coordinates. And car.global_transform.basis.y is the direction towards the up of the car.
The method look_at needs an up vector because there are infinite ways to look at a given point (rotate around the view line). Thus, we do not want an up vector that matches the view line. For example, Vector3.UP won't work if the camera is looking directly up or directly down.
And if you just want to rotate this in the designer. You can use the gizmo you see when you select it. You can drag the blue ring until it is aligned correctly.
The de facto standard for this gizmos is that x is red, y is green, and z is blue (this is true in Godot, Blender, and plenty of other software). So the blue ring rotates around the z axis. You can also find that rotation in the inspector panel, look for rotation degrees for the z under transform.
I remind you that if you place the Camera as a child node of another Spatial, it will keep its position and orientation relative to it. So placing the Camera as child of your player character (e.g. a KinematicBody) is often good enough for the early stages of development, as that guarantees that the Camera follows the player character. No coding necessary. You may want a more elaborate Camera control later, which would require some code.
Since you mention "spinning camera", perhaps you want a Camera that orbits around a point. The easier way to do this is to add an auxiliary Spatial for the point the Camera rotates around. Let us call it Pivot, and rotate that. For clarity, I'm suggesting a setup like this:
PlayerCharacter
└ Pivot
└ Camera
Here the Pivot follows the player character. And the Camera follows the Pivot. So moving the player character moves the Camera, and rotating the Pivot makes the Camera orbit. This is just lacking some code to make the Pivot rotate. For example something like this (code for Pivot):
global_transform.rotate_y(Input.get_axis("camera_left", "camera_right"))
Where "camera_left" and "camera_right" are actions configured in the Input Map (in Project settings). Which reminds me, you can set actions from code with Input.action_press, so there could be code somewhere else (e.g. _input) writing these actions from mouse movement.
Camera Control does not have to be hard.

AnyLogic - Move presentation frame dynamicaly

I've got a model with cars moving over the road. To make roads length similar to real-life sizes I had to change the scale so the cars turned into points (4px*2px).
Are there any facilities in AnyLogic 7 PLE to, for ex, zoom one of the cars and track it?
Yes, it is possible. If you want to zoom in one car and follow it in 3D (like if the car has GoPro at top), use Camera object with dynamic coordinates. Railway Station example model and its cameraOnTrain object illustrates the concept.
In case if you want to do similar thing in 2D space (GTA2 view mode), you may drag & drop empty Group element. In its On Draw action use the code:
getPresentation().getPanel().setOffsets( 300-agent.getX(), 300-agent.getY());
The code will constantly move frame, so car always will appear with in the bottom right corner of the 300x300 square, drawn from top left corner. Zoom can be adjusted with mouse wheel, or with code as well:
getPresentation().getPanel().setZoom( double value);

Terrain tile scale in case of tilted camera

I am working on 3d terrain visualization tool right now. Surface is logically covered with square tiles. This tiling could be visualized as follows:
Suppose I want to draw a picture on these tiles. The level of detail for a picture is required to be selected according to the current camera scale which is calculated for each tile individually.
In case of vertical camera (no tilt, i.e. camera looks perpendicularly on the ground) all tiles have the same scale which is camera focal length divided on camera height above the ground.
Following picture depicts the situation:
where red triangle is camera which has no tilt, BG is camera height above the ground and EG is focal length, then scale = AC/DF = BG/EG
But if camera has tilt (i.e. pitch angle isn't 0) then scale is changed from tile to tile (even from point to point).
So I wonder if there any kind method to produce reasonable scale for each tile in that case ?
There may be (there almost surely is) a more straightforward solution, but what you could do is regular world to screen coordinate conversion.
You just take the coordinates of bounding points of the tile and calculate to which pixels on the screen these will project (you of course get floating point precision). From this, I believe you can calculate the "scale" you are mentioning.
This is applicable to any point or set of points in the world space.
Here is tutorial on how to do this "by hand".
If you are rendering the tiles with OpenGL or DirectX, you can do this much easier.

How to implement an eraser tool in a simple drawing app?

I have a prototype of a simple drawing application. When the user drags a finger across the screen, I record the points along the way and draw a series of lines between them. In other words, a drawing is a list of “paths” and each path is a list of points to connect. This is easy, it works and it’s efficient.
The problem is I’d like to implement an eraser tool. In a regular bitmap editor the eraser simply erases pixels, but in my drawing there are no pixels to erase – all pixels are created dynamically by stroking the paths. I could do a simple eraser by “drawing” using the background colour, overlaying the already painted paths. But I’d like to draw on a textured background, so that’s a no-go.
How would you do this? (Short of the obvious solution of representing the drawing as a bitmap where the eraser is simple.)
You can't implement an eraser in the traditional sense; what you describe with recording the paths and drawing them dynamically is vector graphics. The concept of an eraser comes from raster graphics (a bitmap, basically). With vector graphics, the user generally selects an item or an area of items to delete.
If you really wanted to do this, you'd basically have to do collision detection between all of the paths in your graphic and the rectangle (or whatever shape) of the eraser. When contact occurs, you'd have to cut the colliding graphic object on either side of the eraser by using the slope of the line(s) in contact with the eraser and the point of intersection.
You could probably find the intersections of your existing paths and the deleted area, split the existing paths up, and create new points at the intersections (which would become start/end points of the newly split paths).
I could do a simple eraser by
“drawing” using the background colour,
overlaying the already painted paths.
But I’d like to draw on a textured
background, so that’s a no-go.
Can't you do an "eraser by drawing" except you don't use a single color but the whole background as color. I mean, for a given path to erase, you take one by one each pixel and color it with the background color of the same pixel cordinates

Fill 2D area bound by vertices in XNA

I'm learning XNA by doing and, as the title states, I'm trying to see if there's a way to fill a 2D area that is defined by a collection of vertices on a plane. I want to fill with a color, not a file-based texture.
For an example, take a rounded rectangle whose vertices are defined by four quarter-circle triangle fans. The vertices are defined by building a collection of triangles, but the triangles may not be adjacent.
Additionally, I would like to fill it with more than a single color -- i.e. divide the bound area into four vertical bands and have each a different color. You don't have to provide me the code, pointing me towards resources will help a great deal. I can be handy with Google (which I did try first, but have failed miserably).
This is as much an exploration into "what's appropriate for XNA" as it is the implementation of it. Being pretty new to XNA, I'm wanting to also learn what should and shouldn't be done on top of what can and can't be done.
Not too much but here's a start:
The color fill is accomplished by using a shader. Reimer's XNA Tutorials on pixel shaders is a great resource on the topic.
You need to calculate the geometry and build up vertex buffers to hold it. Note that all vector geometry in XNA is in 3D, but using a camera fixed to a plane will simulate 2D.
To add different colors to different triangles you basically need to group geometry into separate vertex buffers. Then, using a shader with a color parameter, for each buffer,
set the appropriate color before passing the buffer to the graphics device. Alternatively, you can use a vertex format containing color information, which basically let you assign a color to each vertex.

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