This lesson describes how to create a basic course using a single flat target in DART Creator or DART Studio.
In this lesson, we'll create a simple course with a single target that travels from 25 yards away to 3 yards away. The screenshots show DART Studio but the steps in this lesson will also work for DART Creator.
Start DART Studio. You will see the default screen similar to the one shown below.
The first thing we want to do is select a new target for this stage, so click the menu button (an icon with three horizontal lines) at the bottom left of the screen and select Flat Targets.
As a shortcut, you can also press the F3 button.
Click the Load button on the Flat Targets menu bar.
The Load Target dialog window will appear. The column on the left side of the dialog shows all the target folders available. All of the B-21 targets are stored in the B-21 folder. The B-27 targets are in the B-27 folder, and so on.
We want to load a B-21 target, so click the B-21 folder at the top left. All of the available B-21 targets are shown in the second column.
Click the B-21E Anatomy target. A preview of the target will be shown to the right.
Click the Load button at the bottom right of the dialog window to load the target. The B-21 Anatomy target is now in your scene. Let’s cause it to move from the back to the front.
To do this click the Motion button on the Targets menu bar at the bottom of the screen.
Objects in DART travel between waypoints. If we want the target to move from 25 yards to 3 yards we need to create two waypoints; one at 25 yards and one at 3 yards.
All objects start with one waypoint. Let's set the position of the first waypoint 25 yards (75 feet) away by selecting the number under Distance at the top of the screen and typing 75.
Now we need to add a second waypoint.
Click the Add button at the bottom left of the screen. This will add a second waypoint.
Set the Distance for this waypoint to 9 feet (3 yards) using the Distance field at the top of the screen. When you are finished, your screen should look like the screen below.
Finally, we need to specify how long it will take the target to travel from 25 yards away to 3 yards away. The more time we give the target to travel the distance, the slower it will move. We’ll do this with the Travel Time in Seconds slider.
For now, let’s set the Travel Time slider to 1. This means that the target will take 1 second to travel the full distance.
Now would be a good time to preview the motion of the target. Do this by clicking the Preview button and clicking the Selected option from the pop-up list. This will show the motion for the selected object, which is always shown with a pink outline.
That’s pretty fast, so let’s slow the speed down. Set the Travel Time slider to 4. This will give the target 4 seconds to travel along the path.
Preview the motion again by clicking the Preview button again and choosing the Selected option – or use the preview shortcut and press the 3 key.
Let’s save this course. To do that, click the menu button and select Courses. You can also use the keyboard shortcut by pressing the F1 key.
Under the Courses menu, click Save.
In the Save Course window, type "Sample Course" and click the Save button or simply press the Enter key.
That’s it! You’ve created and saved your first course and used all of the features found in the Motion menu. Next, we'll learn how to add multiple stages and rules to a course.