SimMechanics

Visualizing and Animating Machines

Virtual Reality Visualization    The SimMechanics virtual reality visualization feature requires the optional Virtual Reality Toolbox. Refer to the Virtual Reality Toolbox User's Guide for full information on installing this toolbox. You can also animate more realistic renderings of bodies by creating your own virtual world with the Virtual Reality Toolbox. Animating the motion of your custom virtual bodies with sensor signals requires building your own interface from SimMechanics to your virtual world. See Creating a Custom Machine Visualization in the Visualizing and Animating Machines chapter. We recommend you allocate generous central processor power, graphics card speed, and memory for the virtual reality feature, especially for animation.

SimMechanics supports two internal visualization/animation tools, powerful aids in building, animating, and debugging machines that you saw in the Conveyor Loader demo:

• The Handle Graphics-based visualization tool built into SimMechanics. The machine is displayed in a Handle Graphics window. You can use all the standard Handle Graphics functions to change the viewer perspective. The window also has options special to SimMechanics.
• An optional visualization tool, called internally by SimMechanics, based on the Virtual Reality Toolbox. The machine is displayed in a virtual scene through a virtual reality viewer. You can change user perspective in the virtual scene. You can change the bodies' properties only by changing their model blocks, not directly through the viewer.

Both tools display the bodies and their Body coordinate systems (CSs) in an abstract, simplified form. You can render the bodies as convex hulls or as equivalent ellipsoids.

Simulating Mechanical Motion

Visualizing Bodies During Machine Building