Notice how the gray bars slowly move from left to right over all the components when viewed in sequence.
#INDUCTIVE AUTOMATION IGNITION ROTATE GENERATOR#
We also placed a signal generator symbol on the window. For this example, we chose the Horizontal Conveyor with Perspective from the Symbol Factory. The following example uses a Signal Generator component to drive the animation, but any incrementing value can be used, such as the Value property on a Timer component, an accumulating value in a PLC, or the current time in seconds. What we do here is duplicate the component multiple times and modify each component to be a little different than the others, and then show and hide them in the correct order to make it seem like they move. With this method, you can make components look like they are moving without actually moving anything. You can adjust the Delay (ms) to be lower or higher to adjust the speed at which the component rotates.
This can be called on a property change when a user enters a new value, or based on other conditions that happen on the window. It provides many options for moving and resizing components, all in one simple scripting function. This function can move and resize components from a Python script. The best way of moving components around on the screen is using the scripting function. In this instance, it would be far easier to create a few static images of the truck with its bed in various states, and then cycle through those images fairly quickly so it looks like it is moving. But, if the truck was instead stationary, and just its bed were moving up and down to simulate the truck dumping its cargo, it may be difficult to seamlessly move the component, since it would not just be moving on one axis, but would require careful rotation and movement combined. It would be fairly simple to make the whole component move forward on its x coordinate, and then back the same amount. For example, making a dump truck move forward and backwards may be better accomplished with actually moving the component. There are two main ways of creating animation: actually moving all or part of a component, or cycling through a few different static images of a component that give the illusion of moving. Animations make it easy to tell if a machine is running, or a conveyor is moving with a quick glance at the screen, and it can help highlight which components aren't currently in use. Animation can be a useful tool to help visualize what is happening at any given time.