smb wrote in message <36CE973E.98F23561@stuttgart.netsurf.de>...
>
>Why don't you post the .mdl here as a microtutorial, prestep to the
>robot thing? I like 5 min crash courses, to get the principle.
>

At the risk of raising the ire of some individuals regarding the posting of
binaries, I've attached a 4kb Moray *.mdl file that hopefully with show the
essentials of IK effects. I'm still experimenting with this myself, so this
info may not be complete or totally accurate.

This Moray file uses a very basic set of the IK capability.   Moray V3.1
Build 4325

* With IK "off", construct the plane, three cylinders, and knob in the usual
way

* Construct a hierarchy as shown in the Select tab. That is, the FlagPole
consists of Section1 and  a group named Sliders. The Sliders group consists
in turn of Section2 and the union TopPole ( Section3 and the Knob).

* Select the lower cylinder (Section1) and "freeze" it in all axes - access
the "Transformation Limits" menu via the Modify button  in the Modify tab.
Likewise "freeze" the remaining two individual Sections (cylinders) and the
Knob (sphere) of the flagpole

* Select the Sliders group; and again access the "Transformation Limits"
menu. This time set the Z-axis range of motion (0 to 4 in this example) and
enable IK Usage. This enables the entire Sliders group to move in the Z
direction with a 4 unit range.

* Select the "TopPole" union and in like manner set the Z-axis range (0 to
5) , enable IK Usage for this union. This now enables the TopPole union to
move (an additional) 5 units in the Z direction. As the length of Section3
is 7 units, the total extended height of the FlagPole will be 7 + 4 + 5 = 16
units.

* From the main menu bar, now turn IK "on" and by selecting the Knob, it
should be possible (with the mouse cursor) to extend/retract the flagpole.

Note that Groups and Unions in the IK chain are generally assigned the
desired IK usage, while primitives (except for the last primitive) within
the chain are frozen. Hope this is of some help.

...larry

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Attachments:
Download 'FlagPole1.mdl.dat' (4 KB)