You create a motion animation by recording the starting position of an object at a specific time, and then record the ending position of the object at a later time. These two positions are called keyframes. The software calculates the intermediate positions of the object between keyframes in a process called interpolation.
Animation features are available only in SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional.
For example, you can use SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional to create a cube at the world origin. Next, you create the starting keyframe with the cube at the origin of the scene. Then you use the move manipulator to move the cube elsewhere in the scene. Lastly, adjust the time in the timeline to two seconds, and add another keyframe. If you set the timeline to 30 frames per second (fps), the software interpolates the cube's intermediate positions over 60 frames in two seconds.
Using the move, rotate, and scale manipulators in the toolbar, you can transform an entire model set, model, part, camera, and light the same way.
With cameras and lights, you can change additional properties from one keyframe to the next (such as depth of field, focal length, light color, and intensity). With appearances, you can change all appearance properties between keyframes, except for textures (which cannot be animated).