Collision Detection in Inventor?

[jlewellen]

Is there any way to use collision detection in Inventor? For example, I'd like to be able to have parts moving around and stopping when they hit something or moving the hit object, depending. Is this possible? I'd really like to use it with gears.

[patTeam241]

There is some collision detection when driving constraints, although it wouldn't be good for your purpose (I don't think) because whenever 2 objects make contact it stops (halting gears immediately). When looking through the driving constraints box, I think it's a check box. Hope this helps.

[petek]

Inventor does detect collision between parts, but does not necessarily stop motion when the collision occurs. In the Drive Constraint dialog, click the [>>] to expand it and you'll see the Collision Detection checkbox.

If you set the Increment to a small enough value, it drives the constraint until the collision occurs, plus one increment value (into the collision), stops and pops up the Collision detected dialog. When you click OK, it "backs up" one increment value to resolve the collision.

I've attached an example Inventor assembly ("Collision.zip") which demonstrates this. Open the assembly and drive the Mate constraint on Box:1