Algodoo

I was looking at this and others and came across this 3D Box. I don't think you can find this using the Algodoo search utility.

I don't know how you found that one! It's quite interesting because his scene was done partially with mechanical devices. It appears to use X/Y platforms (not sure what else to call them) with springs that change their lengths, and there's a box at the X/Y intersection that's glued to a specific circle at the corners of the rotating cube. When each X/Y platform changes position, the corresponding corner of the cube gets translated. When all corners of the cube are translated together, it makes the entire cube rotate. It's very clever, but different from the way I did it, which uses only math, and moves each corner of the cube by adjusting its pos{0} and pos(1) position variables . I do not employ any mechanical devices at all.

Good find!

I found that one by searching Google Images with the following search string:

site:www.algodoo.com/algobox 3D

I tried out the scene, then saved it as a .phn, opened it in Wordpad, and then looked at the code. After looking at the code I assumed it was all done in code. Now that I think about it, judging by the age of the scene, direct manipulation of the position property was not available at the time. That is probably the reason for the mechanical stages. It appears that RBS16 changes the length of springs to move a vertex as opposed to using the pos property.

I reverse engineered RBS16's scene also. It uses traditional trig (sin & cos) functions for calculating angles, but the algorithm he uses seems to be different from mine. I think that's because he calculates the X & Y positions of those 8 mechanical stages rather than direct manipulation of the pos properties of the cube's corner points, which, as you stated, was not possible in the early days of Algodoo and Phun. If RBS16 were still active on Algodoo today (his last scene was in 2010), he would probably do a really good 3D rotation scene because he would be able to use the latest Thyme features and functions. He seems to have a good understanding of Trig and how to utilize it in a practical application. I know just enough about Trig to be dangerous!