Comments on: Rolling Wheel Animation

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:42:00 +0000

Jay – Thanks, that’s a cool demonstration. Your blog has quite a few other interesting posts, too. I’ll thank you in advance for “wasting” my time.

By: Jay

Jay — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:26:42 +0000

In my experience I’ve found that switching screen updating off and on does speed up things (obviously) but when working with animations and especially on a slow computer, it can cause switchoever to the next “frame” a little sudden and therefore “jarring”. However I could be wrong as I use a box that was made a few million years ago :-)

Also if this helps anybody looking at ways of capturing the movement of the mouse in any of their animations, this example on my website may be useful:
http://www.databison.com/?p=377

Jay

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:16:36 +0000

Adam -

Thanks for the information.

By: AdamV

AdamV — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:15:31 +0000

In our A-level maths class (so aged 17 / 18 years) we each had to research a particular class of curves and present interesting facts about them (with proofs of course).
Cycloids are really neat – the length of one arc is four times the diameter of the circle which traces it. The area under the curve is three times the area of the circle.
Cycloids are also found as the solution to a couple of special cases for falling objects. Wikipedia does a good job of these here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachistochrone_curve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautochrone_curve

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:54:51 +0000

Doug – Interesting. I find the macro runs more slowly in 2007, but the chart keeps up with the worksheet calculations.

By: Doug Jenkins

Doug Jenkins — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:49:22 +0000

Jon – I do have SP1 installed. I find the animation runs about half speed in 2007 (compared with 2000), with the screenupdating turned off and on at each step. That’s pretty typical of macros in 2007 that do a lot of interaction with the spreadsheet in my experience.

By: Alvaro Ledesma

Alvaro Ledesma — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:01:31 +0000

I really like this one. It is the first time in a while that I have no clue what was going on in a spreadsheet. I kept looking at the graph and trying to find your macros for the animation… and nothing. The full animation and controls are so simple and yet provide a lot of functionality with little code. It is an elegant solution for the task on hand.

Alvaro

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:49:20 +0000

Doug -

I haven’t tried animations lately in Excel 2007. An oversight caused by my avoidance of that version. I recall that animations worked poorly during preliminary assessment of Excel 2007 years ago. Does switching ScreenUpdating off and on cause any flickering of the chart?

Update:

I just tested the rolling wheel and gas prices animations in Excel 2007 SP1. The animations worked about the same as in 2003, not quite as smoothly but without the bad behavior I recall from animations I tested in the past.

I also just tested these animations in Excel 2007 No SP (Thanks, Virtual PC). The gas prices animation worked as it did in 2007 SP1, but the rolling wheel advanced only one step in the rotation, then waited until all worksheet calculations were complete, before it jumped to the end.

Prior to SP1, Excel 2007 was positively sluggish at updating charts with more than a hundred or so points. If you haven’t upgraded to SP1, you might be suffering from this problem.

By: Doug Jenkins

Doug Jenkins — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:19:53 +0000

Works nicely with Excel 2000 but in 2007 it goes straight to the end.

Adding:
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.ScreenUpdating = True

before the DoEvents statement is one way to make it work, albeit slowly

Another approach to animation at:
http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/newtons-cradle/

By: derek

derek — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:39:56 +0000

Sounds like a theme for your next competition: everybody enter their animated Excel charts.