Selecting this menu item pops up a window which allows you to control the animation of plots.
The
Animation
window looks like
Animation window
, if you are using MeshTV's defaults. If you aren't, the values might be different.
The Animation window allows you to indicate that plots should be cached and to control the speed of the animation by using a slider bar or typing a number.
If you don't see a description for an item in this window, check in the Shared items section near the front of the chapter.
The Cache toggle button allows you to cache the polygons of your plots so animations run faster. After the original runthrough, when plots are first calculated and placed in the cache, the animation speeds up. To use this option, click on the toggle so that it is pressed "in" and becomes highlighted, generally in yellow. Note that this option can only be used on computers with sufficient RAM. This number is based on many things and can be different on different machines, though a good "rule of thumb" is around 40 MEG of RAM. Your mileage may vary.
Use this button to set your own frame rate for animations by moving the Speed slider bar or entering the number of frames/second in the Speed text field. If this button is off, the computer displays frames as fast as possible, and the Speed slider bar and Speed text field will be grayed out.
The Speed text field allows you to specify the number of frames to draw per second. If you specify a value higher than the computer can render, frames will be skipped. A value of 0 instructs the computer to go at its maximum speed without skipping frames, though you can also achieve this by deselecting the Speed toggle button. This field will be grayed out unless the Speed toggle button is selected.
The position of the slider bar is automatically updated to match the number typed in the text field when you hit the Enter key or Apply button.
The Speed slider bar allows you to specify the number of frames rendered per second. If you specify a value higher than the computer can render, frames will be skipped. A value of 0 instructs the computer to go at its maximum speed without skipping frames, though you can also achieve this by deselecting the Speed toggle button. This field will be grayed out unless the Speed toggle button is selected.
As you move the slider bar, the Speed text field will update with the currently selected number.