Quote:
Originally Posted by worldbringer
That's cool.
How do you define the motion within the program? Do you, for example, describe the arm's angle as a function of time? Or does the program understand how motors work, and you input the motor's speed or power?
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The physical simulator has four basic properties that can be applied to parts and assemblies -- gravity, linear spring, linear motor and rotary motor.
Gravity behavies as you might expect. You can vary the magnitude and direction.
Linear springs are defined by a free length and a spring force. The program seems to try to differentiate between compression and tension springs automagically and has mixed success. Unfortunately, there's no way to account for a spring's physical characteristics -- compressed length, particularly.
Linear and rotary motors are defined by speed of motion rather than the physical characteristics as well. Also, their operation is unaffected by other circumstances. For example, a rotary motor can be set to operate at a speed of 45*/sec -- but it doesn't slow or speed up based upon load.
The dynamics modeling is great for determining how motion will play out given a limited set of variables -- but it can by no means be used to determine gearing or load bearing capacity.