Hi there,
I am having an issue with an animation I am doing of a fan spinning on some evaporators. I made it into a template. It works fine only problem is after some time the fans actually start to move off the spot and eventually just float off the screen. I am using the signal generator to get them to spin smoothly and have it set as ramp. If I go off the page and come back the fans go back to there spot. It was working fine on Ignition 7 but now on 8 it started doing it again. Anyone else experience this and how did you fix it?
Sounds like you are using existing coordinates for your math every time. That will have problems with pixel round-off. Always do your coordinate math relative to your original location and angle.
But I’m not using any math. I have the cool fan from symbol factory and just binded the angle of it to the signal generator value. That is all. Would I need to be doing some math somewhere?
Have you tried bolting down your fan to a fixed surface? 
Try grouping your fan object with a circle (transparent stroke and fill) and put the animation on the group instead*. That way when the object spins, the x/y coordinates won’t (shouldn’t?) change as the bounding box will not change in size.
*without being on my laptop, I can’t remember if shape groups have the angle property exposed
Edit: Scratch that, it turns out that node bezier anchors affect the bounding box of a shape, therefore, when the circle is rotated, the bezier anchors move with the top/bot/left/right of the circle as well and protrude outside of the original bounds… In any case, I can’t seem to break any shape I try to rotate.
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Huh. That would suggest a flaw in the symbol factory’s math.
Interesting, I’m spinning a fan myself within a template, using just a timer bound to the angle property an it just sits and spins in place.
We’ve had this problem with turn tables (though turn tables don’t rotate as often as a fan). They would start to rotate off their center, but also start to deform. Loading the client again fixes the issue, but if you let them rotate in the designer, and save it like that, you’ll have to fix everything manually again.
The behaviour seems to depend on the Ignition version, and on how you align and scale the templates.
Generally, using relative alignment and not rescaling the template on the page you use, fixes our rotation issues.
It also helps to work with integer pixels wherever possible (inside the templates, on the page). If not for the skewing problem, at least for verifying nothing is resized.
You need to let them run for a couple of hours before you start to notice something.
Yea. I noticed it is Ignition version dependent as it was working fine on Ignition 7 and now that I moved to 8.0.10 its back. The work around I have done for now is every 10 minutes if the operator doesn’t touch the screen just swap to another page and then when the operator comes back it swaps back to the page with the animation. So far one full day and no issue. I will update if this does fix it after watching it for a couple of days.
Sorry for the late reply. After some months looks like the problem is back. The fans are exactly 46 x 46. I took off the Maintain Aspect Ratio and I also have a timer going that if the screen is idle for 10 mins to change to another screen to reset the fans. But somehow the issue is still there. Does anyone have any other solutions?
Are you rotating the whole thing or just the impeller group?
I am rotating the whole fan part
Try rotating just the impeller group, then.
What if it’s in space though and the whole enclosure is actually rotating? In fact that could be why it’s floating away 
What do you mean by that? They are in space?
You’re going to hate me, but… if the fan was outside the earth’s atmosphere, in space, it would in all likelyhood be spinning all together, and with no tether, it would eventually float away into the cosmos as you’re experiencing 
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Huh. you're right. 
In the meantine, @brandon222, did you get a chance to try rotating just the impeller?
This the part that I am rotating using signal generator. Is that what you meant?
I'll add to the hate... what is added by making things spin? There's really no place and benefit for graphics like that. Yes, it's cool, but I'd rather see data that adds to the operation.
Edit, but if you are dead set, use a gif. Many free online tools.
Huh. I don’t seem to have that one.
Is that already part of a group above it?
