Motion Controller Elements

Each element of the Motion Controller affects a different aspect of motion.

Target: This button describes the objects that will be affected by the Motion Controller buttons. If at least one object is moving in your sketch, you can click to display a pop-up menu of moving points and changing parameters. Choose an object from the menu to select it and to make it the new target.

You can also change the target by selecting an object with the Selection Arrow tool, although that can be hard to do if the object is moving.

If there are movable selected objects in your sketch, the target matches the selections. If there are selected objects that cannot be moved, there’s no target. If the sketch contains moving objects but no selections, the target is all moving objects.

Animate: Click this button to animate each target object. This button has the same effect as the Animate command.

Stop: Click this button to stop each moving target object. This button has the same effect as the Stop Animation command.

Reverse: Click this button to reverse the direction of each moving target object. This button is enabled when at least one target object is moving in a fixed direction (rather than in random directions).

Pause: Click this button to pause all motion. Unlike the other elements of the Motion Controller, this button affects every moving object, not just the target.

Speed: Click and type a new speed here to change the speed of each moving target object.

Increase/Decrease Speed Arrows: Click one or the other of these arrows to increase or decrease by one step the speed of each moving target. These arrows have the same effect as the Increase Speed and Decrease Speed commands.

Each speed step is a little more than 25%; three speed steps in a row changes the speed by a factor of two.

Drag the Motion Controller by the title bar to reposition it. If you’re using a Windows computer, you can also dock it to either the top or bottom of the Sketchpad window.