Exporting
Everything is on the Export tab (and the File menu). Figures are drawn by the same code as the screen, in textbook style in Research, so what you see is what you get. Selection highlights and tool previews are never exported.
Figures
| Export | What you get |
|---|---|
| SVG Figure | a vector figure for slides, Word, Inkscape or Illustrator |
| PDF Figure | one vector page the size of the figure; Greek letters and LaTeX labels as outlines, no fonts to embed |
| TikZ | LaTeX code with a live preview: scale (pt per studio pixel), label size, standalone or a tikzpicture to paste. Needs tikz with the arrows.meta and patterns libraries; compiles with pdflatex, lualatex and xelatex. Labels become math (m₁ → $m_{1}$) |
| PNG Image | the view at three times the screen's resolution |
TikZ with macros. In the TikZ dialog, Style → Macros writes the figure as named pieces instead of the drawing's paths, in the manner of the tikzphysics package: \Ground, \Pulley and \PinSupport macros, and the styles o2d mass, o2d fixed, o2d spring (a coil), o2d rod, o2d rope, o2d pulley, o2d support and o2d joint. Restyle the whole figure with one line, for example \tikzset{o2d spring/.style={draw=blue, decorate, decoration={zigzag}}}. Labels, dimensions, angles and free-body diagrams sit where they do in the drawing. Sliders, belts, thrusters and fixed supports are drawn as plain shapes. Also needs the decorations.pathmorphing and calc libraries (the standalone file loads them).
LaTeX Labels (Export tab) typesets every label by LaTeX rules on screen and in all exports; see Figures.
Animations
Video / GIF replays the recorded run into a file, faster than real time: MP4 (H.264, plays everywhere), WebM, or GIF. Choose the shape (as the canvas, vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, portrait 4:5, square or wide 16:9), the width, frames per second, the start and length, the playback speed, a time label, the camera (as now, or framing the whole scene) and the quality; the dialog estimates the file size. A vertical 9:16 video frames the scene large in the middle and leaves the top and the bottom empty, where the phone apps put their own buttons and captions. The run itself is not changed.
Data
- Table (CSV): the run's table with every column.
- From a graph: PNG, SVG, or pgfplots code for LaTeX with the axis names and units set properly.
The credit line
Figures and animations carry a small line, "Made with Ordinate 2D · ordinate2d.com", under the figure or in the corner. Turn it off in the scene's Properties → Export. Exporting is part of Pro, which also licenses the figures for teaching, papers, books and commercial work.
Alt text
Every figure you export carries a description for readers who cannot see it: an SVG has a title and a description (and role="img"), a PNG a Description text, a PDF its Subject, and TikZ a comment above the picture. It is written from the scene — the bodies with their sizes and masses, the supports, how they are connected, the annotations and the gravity — for example "…It shows a horizontal ground and a pulley of radius 0.22 m, with m₁ (a disk of radius 0.15 m, 2 kg) and m₂ (…). A cable runs from m₁ over Pulley to m₂…". To write your own, use scene Properties (nothing selected) → Scene → Figure description; Copy alt text copies it for a page or a slide.
Exam variants
Export → Exam Variants (Research mode) turns the open scene into an exam template:
- Tick the parameters to vary (a mass, a spring constant, an initial speed, gravity, a constant) and give each a range and its decimals. Each has a placeholder such as
{m1_mass}. - Write the question with the placeholders: Masses $m_1 = {m1_mass}$ kg and … (LaTeX is allowed). A label in the figure may use them too.
- Add the answers: a quantity of a body or joint and how to reduce it (its final value, maximum, period …), as in a parameter sweep.
- Choose how many variants, a seed (the same seed gives the same values) and how long each variant is simulated.
The studio simulates every variant for its answers and downloads a LaTeX document of the exam class: one question per variant with its figure (TikZ) and its solution, and an answer key. Remove \printanswers for the students' copy. The answers are the simulation's, so check that the time you give is long enough for what you ask (and short enough that nothing has hit the floor). {time} in the question is that time.
Format: a PDF made in the studio (with the solutions and the answer key, or the students' copy without them), the LaTeX source (exam class, figures as TikZ), or both. Making the variants leaves your recorded run as it was. Each variant starts from the scene as it was when you pressed Play, even if the run has gone on since. Choose a quantity that changes with what you vary: a pulley on a fixed axle never moves, so its position and velocity are 0 (the dialog warns you). After the export the studio names any answer that came out the same in every variant, and why. In the figures, the ground ends a little beyond the mechanism, so a small machine is not drawn at the scale of a long floor.