I’d like the link to rotate about the bottom ball just like it would in the real world. It gets the job done but it isn’t that realistic. If I rotate the actor with the current Gizmo orientation, the actor will rotate about its center. When I select Rotate and one of the link actors, as expected, the Gizmo is at the center. What if the Gizmo isn’t where you need it or you need to move an actor relative to another? Let’s look at an example using Rotate, but this works for all move and explode commands on the Transform tab. The default orientation of the Gizmo works most of the time, you simply click and drag to position the actor and then go to the next. Position the actor by grabbing the X, Y or Z arrow on the Gizmo, they are quite easy to use. This is where the actor will translate and rotate from.
The Gizmo is at the center of the bounding box of the actor and its orientation is defined by the XYZ directions from the SOLIDWORKS model. You can see that when I select an actor (that’s what models are called in Composer), and then select the Translate command, a Gizmo (the triad) is made visible. In this example, I’m beginning to capture views to document the disassembly of the rotor head of this RC helicopter. There are others, but those two are the main ones used and what I’d like to talk about. SOLIDWORKS Composer has some very easy to use tools to create exploded views the Translate and Rotate tools on the Transform tab come to mind.