There are just a few steps. The steps are demonstrated in the attached scene.
1. Start with a basic cylinder.
2. position the cylinder at 0,0,0, and set the ground to: Wire. This makes it easy to see the
axes. That in turn makes it easy to get your fan blades straight in the next step.
3. edit the cylinder. For the +x axis, select the two faces that straddle the axis.
X axis is green, Y axis is blue. So you Ctrl-click the two faces to select them both.
4. translate these two faces outwards about 2 units, til the face lines up with a grid line
5. Repeat step 4 for the other axes: -x, +y, and -y.
6. When done, your object will look like a big "Plus" sign, like the 2nd object in the transition, in the scene.
7. Now select the top face of your object, and translate it down, to make the fan shorter.
8. With this face still selected, rotate the top face until you are happy with the result.
9. Right click anywhere in 3d space to exit edit mode.
10. Congratulations! You just created a nice looking fan. Now let's animate it.
11. Open the Link Editor. In the scene, you can see I have already expanded the matrix of our cylinder by
right clicking the 'Matrix' connector, and selecting 'Expand'. This gives us access to the individual transform elements.
12. Add a timer event. This is found in the Library: Activity - Events. You open the Library window by clicking the Library icon.
This is in the bottom row of icons, and looks like a Magnifying glass and folder. Double click "Activity - Events" in the window that opens. When you do, the Events library is added to the Library panel in the main interface.
13. Drag and drop the timer event into the link editor.
14. Next, add a Math - Binary Op node, from the Math - Operations library. To view the Math-Operations library, perform the same steps as in (12), except select Math - Operations
Now we're ready to work in the Link Editor (LE).
15. Connect the Timer's Time output connector to the A input on the BinaryOp node. You do this by click-dragging on the blue connector of the Timer Event, and dragging to the red 'A' connector on the Binary Op node. You will see a curvey line created.
You will know you have a 'connection' when the background of the 'A' on the BinaryOp node changes its grey color; it gets lighter. So now you have that connection.
16. Next, connect the 'Result' connector of the BinaryOp to the 'yaw' connector of the ExpandedIn node. The ExpandedIn node is the expanded matrix which we generated in step 11.
17. To activate the animation, select the 'Active' checkbox on the timer. Notice how your fan is now rotating. It may be moving pretty slow though, so let's change that.
18. You do not have to deselect the 'Active' checkbox on the Timer Event to do this step; the timer updates its output connectors, and thus, all connected nodes, on each timer pulse. The frequency of the update is determined by the Period textbox in the Timer Event. So change that Period to 30, then press Enter.
19. The fan is moving a little faster, but let's make it go even faster. That is the purpose of the BinaryOp we added, in this case. Change the 'B' parameter on the BinaryOp to 25, then press Enter. Notice how the fan is moving faster now.
20. Make some changes to the 'B' parameter to either increase or slow down the fan movement.
21. To get really smooth animation, set the Period to 15 on the timer.
