Engines

• Introduction to Engines
• General Uses of Engines
• Types of Engines
• Making Field Connections
• Reference Counting
• Disabling a Connection
• Updating Values
• Global Fields
• Animation Engines
• Track Follower Engine
• Gate Engine
• Arithmetic Engines
• Nodes Used for Animation

Chapter Objectives. After reading this chapter, you'll be able to do the following:

• Connect fields in a scene graph to each other
• Create and use global fields in the database
• Connect a variety of engines to fields and other engines in a scene graph
• Disable engine connections temporarily
• Create a simple engine network
• Animate parts of a scene using engines
• Use the rotor, blinker, shutter, and pendulum nodes to animate parts of a scene graph This chapter describes engines, classes of Inventor objects that can be connected to fields in the scene graph and used to animate parts of the scene or to constrain certain elements of the scene to each other. It also describes how fields can be connected to engines and to other fields, and how to use and create global fields in the database.