Scenario Recording

Automation of creating animation scripts. 
Recorder allows saving rotations, movements and scaling of actors. All changes of your scene will be saved in a Scenario File (*.sc).

Note: For TurboCAD v6.5, only rotations can be saved. For TurboCAD v7 - all options will work.

Now you can create animations of complex mechanical and human models easily. 
Just change the model in your drawing and press the button - the program will generate the script with predefined number of intermediate states and in accordance with the set law.

For more details, please see Manual - Scenario Recorder and Tutorial - Scenario recording

Parameterization

Support of variables in the command parameters.
Your can change object's parameters in accordance with a mathematical rule, or data from a file.
AnimationLab 1.0 allowed only numeric parameters and actor names to be used in commands parameters. For example, Move 0, 0, 0. Version 2.0 allows using entire expressions, with arithmetic signs, and also symbolic names of variables, e.g. Move 2*X, Y+2.5 , 0. In general, any expression written in VBScript language (Microsoft Scripting Technologies) can be a command parameter in 2.0.

Let's examine usage of parameterization for Move 2*X, Y+2.5 , 0 command. 
X, Y variables should be described in Custom Script. See Pic. 1

Pic. 1

Custom Script is run before the start of each frame. In the example, shown on Pic. 1, frame number (global variable StepNum) is assigned to X variable, that is, it can have the values 0, 1, 2, 3….. Y variable is increased by one at each frame.
To define such complex movement (along a parabola) without using parameterization, it would be necessary to create a command for each step:
   Move 2,  3.5, 0
   Move 4,  4.5, 0
   Move 8, 54.5, 0
   ……………. etc.

Parameterization allows avoiding tiresome work of writing scenarios with commands of the same type (like the one shown above), if laws of parameters' changing are known.
Besides, VBScript provides a possibility to read data from the disk, which is very convenient for entering parameters from tables; see also VBScript Support Enhancement.

Visual Basic Script Support Enhancement

AnimationLab 2.0 provides the possibility to create macros in VBScript language (Microsoft Scripting Technologies) and save them in a drawing. Unlike version 1.0, you can use VBScript macros not only in Custom Script Window, but also in commands parameters (see Parameterization.)
VBScript is a subset of Visual Basic language. In the area of using TurboCAD SDK objects, it has practically the same abilities as VBA (which is distributed only with TurboCAD Pro version). See samples of VBScript programs: TurboCAD HTML Plugins


Global variables of AnimationLab Custom Script :
ActiveDrawing - the currently active drawing. It is used for accessing TurboCAD SDK objects
For example, obtaining a Graphics object:
     Dim Graphics
     Set Graphics = ActiveDrawing.Graphics

StepCount - the total number of frames.

StepNum - the number of the current frame. Can have the values 0, 1, 2…,(StepCount -1). 
Example of Custom Script, which uses StepNum
    Sub StepCustomAction
       Alert StepNum
    end sub

In the sample, a message with the frame number will be displayed in each frame.

Pic: Message in the first frame.

ActorCount - the total number of actors.

PathCount - the total number of actors that are used as a path. 

Actors - an array of actors. Contains ActorCount of elements. Array index values can have the values 0, 1, 2…,( ActorCount -1). Each element is a record, which has the following fields: first - actor-graphic ID, second - actor name.
Example of obtaining ID of the graphic and name of the first actor.
    Sub StepCustomAction
        Alert Actors(0)(0) 'Output of the message with graphic ID 
        Alert Actors(0)(1) 'Output of the message with actor name
    end sub