Mechanical APDL Basic Analysis Guide

17.5. The Stand Alone ANIMATE Program

When you create animations in Linux, they are stored as ANIM files. This format is not supported outside
of ANSYS. You can use the ANIMATE Program (ANIMATE.exe) to conveniently play back your ANIM
files on the PC.The ANIMATE program runs on the PC, even if you do not have ANSYS installed. You
can also use the ANIMATE program to convert your ANIM files to an AVI format. The AVI animation file
format is supported by a number of Windows applications, including Windows Media Player. ANIMATE
is especially useful for creating portable files that can be exchanged via the internet, since the AVI file
format is significantly smaller than the ANIM format.

The ANIMATE program is included with ANSYS on Windows. The program is located in the bin\intel
directory, and requires no license keys or passwords to install. It provides better frame-speed and window-
size control than the standard Windows Media Player, and is small enough to be transported or e-mailed
with your other analysis files.

17.5.1. Installing the ANIMATE Program

In order to install and successfully run the ANIMATE program on a Windows system, you must ensure
that the Windows registry has been modified to recognize the required DLL.To do this, navigate in a
command window (Start> Programs> Accessories> Command Prompt) to the Program
Files\ANSYS Inc\V150\ANSYS\bin\intel (or winx64) directory and run regsvr32.exe on
DSGStreamU.dll. You do this by running the file using the specific path, which in most cases is
C:\winnt\system32 (check to ensure that this is the path for your system).

For example, while in the directory containing the DLL file, run:

C:\winnt\system32\regsvr32 DSGStreamU.dll

17.5.2. Running the ANIMATE Program

In order to convert your Linux animations, the ANIM files must be transferred to the Windows file system.
This can be done using FTP protocols, or with SAMBA or some other file system transfer utility. Once
the ANIM files are accessible, they can be opened directly.

The controls provided for the ANIMATE program are nearly identical to those found in the ANSYS anim-
ation controller. When you start the program, the panel shown below is displayed.

Figure 17.1: The ANIMATE Program Display

You can access the following operations from the initial program display:

• File: Allows you to open AVI or ANIM files and to save these files in Tr ue Color AVI or 256 Color
  format.


• Options: Allows you to pop up the ANIMATION CONTROLLER, and to choose from six different screen
  sizes for the animation window.


• View: Allows you to toggle (ON or OFF) the display of the TOOLBAR (icons at the top of the screen)
  and the display of the STATUS BAR (read out at the bottom).


• Help: Displays information about the program.

Release 15.0 - © SAS IP, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information

Animation