Hi All, sorry for being too late in posting this one. So before putting any further delay here are the steps by steps on doing “SolidWorks Cutaway Animation”. Please note that you should have SolidWorks Professional OR Premium installed in order to access the animation/motion manager.
If you’re reading this for first time do check this completed animation
Download the files you would need for this animation here. The files are in SW2013 version.
1. Open the assembly SolidWorks Cutaway Animation.
2. Set the three default assembly planes to show (optional, but make it easier in selection).
3. Insert a part named Cutting Plate and drop it anywhere in assembly.
4. Select the top face of Cutting Plate and add a distance mate for 140 mm between assembly top plane and top face of the Cutting Plate.
5. Rotate the view and go on the back side.
6. Select the face shown and add a coincident mate with Right plane (important).
7. Select the face shown and add a coincident mate with Front plane (important).
8. You may now set the three assembly plane to hidden state (in case you’ve set them to show).
9. Select the top face of Cutting Plate and start a new sketch (important).
10. Now click on the convert entities to get the sketch we need for this animation (I’ve set the Cutting Plate to hidden state for clarity).
11. With the sketch active, go to Insert > Assembly Features > Cut > Extrude.
12. Set End condition as thru all. Under Feature Scope uncheck “Auto Select” and then select the components you want to cut thru.
13. Click OK to exit the sketch/cut feature mode. Test the set up by changing the distance mate from 140mm to 5mm. You should see the cut feature in the assembly. Keep the distance as 5mm only (optional).
14. In case you don’t see the cut, then please change the cut-extrude direction.
15. Once you set it up, then switch to motion study tab. Please note that you should have the MotionManager selected under View menu.
16. In the motion study tab, drag the slider to any time (in this I’ve set it to 6 sec).
17. Expand the mates folder.
18. Double click on the distance mate we have set between the top plane and cutting plane. Set the value back to 140mm. Click OK to set the distance.
19. Now you should see the blue lines in the motion manager which represent change in the vale.
20. Finally click on calculate button and enjoy the animation.
You can add motors to the shaft to get more realistic animation. I’ve used PhotoView360 to process this animation shown below.
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