1. Introduction
2. Implementations
3. Noteworthy Things You Can Customize
   • Mouse Information
   • Multiple Stage Animation
   • Multiple Snappers
   • Core Properties
   • Graphics in Animation
   • Others

Introduction

An Animation is a class that implements a temporary user interaction in a view. Examples of common animations are:

• InsertAnimation
  Insert a Snapper, including positioning it and snapping to other objects.
  
  
• DragAnimation
  Move the selection.
  
  
• StretchAnimation
  Stretch Snappers, for instance, change width or height with a dragging gesture.
  
  
• Move3DAnimation
  Pan in a 2D view.
  
  
• Rotate3DAnimation
  Pan, move or circle target in a 3D view.
  
  
• SnapClickAnimation
  Disconnect Snappers.

An Animation takes over the normal behavior of the program while it's running. For instance, when you are inserting a Snapper, clicking somewhere normally means to place / drop the Snapper being inserted. When no Animation is running, clicking in a view selects what you click on.

Implementations

The most common implementations are automatic by overriding Snapper's animation methods:

• insertAnimation()
• leftDragAnimation()
• rotateAnimation()
• etc. methods that return Animation

There are also times you want users to select something in the library toolbox to start an Animation, and for that, you use the AnimationLimb class.

For any other uses, the best way would be to use the animate() function in cm/core/animationStack.cm

Noteworthy Things You Can Customize

Mouse Information

As the main purpose of an Animation is to use as an intuitive method of manipulation using mostly the mouse, you can extract mouse information to customize what you want to do based on this information.

Multiple Stage Animation

If you have an idea to make an input that has multiple stages (i.e. First click it to set a coordinate, Second click to place a stretched coordinate point of a wall). You can refer to SpawningAnimation.

Multiple Snappers

If in some situations you need to manipulate multiple Snappers in one Animation (i.e. Inserting multiple Snappers in a single InsertAnimation), you can add the Snappers with appending using <<.

Core Properties

If the Animation is G2, you can implement Core Properties into your custom Animation object. For more information, refer to the Core Properties article.

Graphics in Animation

Placing graphics into an Animation can assist in improving the intuitive understanding while using a custom Animation. This can be done in overriding the drawGraphs()/get3D() method in the Animation class.

Others

Most Animations that are G2 will be implemented from CoreAnimation, therefore reading through the class's methods can give you a more updated and detailed picture of what can be customized.