Spinning server

[agraunke]

Hi All,

This is not the most useful model. With that disclaimer, I present the spinning server:

RotatingServer.spfx

 

It is inspired by some of the logic/features of the (very cool) crane library. Although this particular model may not be very useful, it might provide some inspiration for others looking for more "dynamic" animation

-Adam

Edited December 13, 2012 by Guest

[jdoran]

You cheated!

It has to be a sub-model lol.

I remember spending ages making an excavator sub-model, and now we have a travel step to make lives easier.

[agraunke]

I prefer “hack” to “cheat”

That’s an interesting comment, though, about sub-models. I feel that in Simio the term ”sub-model” doesn’t really exist; or, rather it describes any model, so it doesn’t really mean anything. I understand the concept of a sub-model, but due to Simio’s object-oriented design any model is a sub-model. The standard library server, for example, is a sub-model. As is the default entity “ModelEntity” and the default model “Model”. So yes, in the sense that I created a custom object (or model) and then used it in another model, the Spinning Server is a sub-model. But then again so is the regular server

The real "cheat" here is that the “server” is actually an entity and requires logic (i.e. processes) at the model level to assist with instantiation, (also, most of the parameters are hard-coded, which introduces scalability issues).

[agraunke]

And, for more fun, here it is with 3D rotation:3DRotatingServer.spfx

[jdoran]

I call it cheating because you can't scale it properly.

Attached is how I would rectify that (Check out the Parent_Model).

Using an entity instead of a server is valid, as it posses functionality we can't get out of the server (heading etc.).

While I agree with you about the technicality of the term sub-model, I disagree in your interpretation of its function. Any model that contains a logical flow and is made up of custom logic, that I use within another model, I just call sub-model (for better or worse). The rest I just consider to be part of the provided toolkit.

"Sub-models" are incredibly useful, until you need to start to modify things inside them from the Parent model, or need to change their height within the sub-model (sub-models do not scale dimension wise at all, while retaining usefulness).

3DRotatingServer.spfx