Gears [Script v. 0.0.2 halfway Pg. 4]!

[S68]

Good

@Gimble

On the Pinion03 gear, select the Empty it is parented to and delete it.
You should see Pinion03 snap horizontally.
Go to top view.
Ensure that the 3Dcursor is located at the Object point of Pinion03 -> Snap 3DCursor to Selected Object.
Add an Empty and parent the Pinion03 Gear to the Empty.
Rotate and Move the Empty, so that Pinion03 meshes properly with Gear03.
Rename the Pinion03 Gear ‘Pinion03’ in the Edit buttons window.

Yep, this is the Correct Way, definitely page 8 of BMG documentation is too condensated

@Gimble

For some reason, the final gear ratio isn’t correct in the DriverSL text file.
You will see that the final 2 gears in the “chain” get out of sync due to this.
Gear03 has 10 teeth and Pinion03 has 30 teeth, so the gear ratio should be 0.333… not the 0.2… that is there in the file you posted.

Is this due to a bug in the script? Please warn me if it is the case!

@Gimble

Usually I always add the gears in top view, then parent them to an Empty.
All of the operations are performed on the gear objects, the Empties are only there to be used as a “handle” to align the gears.

The Empties can also, in turn, be parented together to form a hierarchy in instances where your entire machine (including the gears) is rotated or spun around as an unit.

Exactly!

Stefano

[Gimble]

Hmm, I don’t believe it was due to an error in the script.
Most probable cause is some wrong values were entered for the gears.
When I divided the final gear count (30) by the gear ratio indicated (0.2857) it came out to 10.5, which of course, couldn’t even be entered in the animation portion of the script.

Also, I was wondering if you were still working on this script?
There was a question the other day about worm gears:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=409635#409635

Really nice script.
Of course not the kind that you use everyday, but very nice when you need it.

[S68]

Well,

I’m having some hard working period, so less time for Scripting. While BGC (which I’m developing now) its very lightweight programming and pretty relaxing devising the correct profile of a worm (and matching! This -is- hard) gear is too neuron-intensive for me now.

Of course script is not dead! I’ll work on that sooner or later

Stefano