Slide Shows

Capturing Images and Creating Slide Shows

This section describes how to capture images in 3d-DigPlus 2000 and how to use the auto capture facility to create slide shows of Dragline Simulation.

Once slides have been captured, they may be viewed directly with PNGplay as described below. They may also be combined into a slide sequence using the MNGedit slide show editor.

To Capture a Graphics Image

This is done with the menu command option Utilities/Capture Window or Utilities/Capture All. Selecting either of these commands calls up a filer in which users can choose the name and location of the file to save the image, and the image format.

Image Formats

Three image formats are available:

•Portable Network Graphics format (PNG), and

•Windows Bitmap format (BMP)

•JPEG- JFIF format (JPG)

The PNG format is compressed, leading to much smaller files. However it takes somewhat longer to capture a screen. This can make some difference to overall time when using autocapture. Two levels of PNG speed/compression tradeoff are offered.

3d-DigPlus 2000 is based in part on the libpng software

The JPEG compression format was developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group for storing photographic and photo-realistic images. The JPEG compression scheme is a lossy compression format; that is, images compressed using JPEG can never be reconstructed exactly. JPEG works by eliminating spatial and chromatic details that the eye will probably not notice. While JPEG can compress most data quite well, the results may include serious cosmetic flaws for images of wire frame surface. JFIF is the JPEG File Interchange Format, developed by C-Cube Microsystems for storing JPEG encoded images. The JFIF format is actually just a JPEG data stream with an identifying header and a few enforced conventions.

3d-DigPlus 2000 is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group

Capture settings are adjusted through the menu command Options/Capture Settings. The details of various Capture Settings are described in the Help topic for the Capture Settings dialog box.

To Create Slide Shows

To create a slide show of the dragline digging

•Open the Dragline Simulation Settings notebook (menu command Simulate/Dragline Settings or icon)

•Make sure that Calculate Productivity, Animate Dragline and Animate Bucket are all selected.

•Choose the level of bucket animation detail required.

•Set the Capture Frequency on the Dragline page. Low, Medium or High Capture Frequency will all result in a captured sequence, while None will disable auto capture.

•Choose the Options/Capture Settings menu to open the Capture Settings dialog box and choose the directory where to save the slides. The Help button on the Capture Settings dialog box (and this hyperlink) will explain other settings.

•Run the simulation and slides will be captured automatically.

To create a slide show sequence compressed into one file use MNGedit.

To View a Created Slide Show

To show the slides run the utility PNGplay.exe supplied with the 3d-Dig2000. Use File/Open to "open" the first slide in the sequence of PNG files or one MNG file. The slide show will then play automatically.

PNGplay provides controls to alter the playtime of all slides, to restart, and to show slides one by one. Details of these are given under the Help option in the PNGplay menu. For further details concerning use of PNGplay this Help option.