Mechanical assembly simulation - tutorial videos and examples

I've made some basic step-by-step guides to simulating mechanical assemblies with Kangaroo:

The rhino file is included below

(These tutorials make use of the 'Coincident' goal, which is in the latest release of Kangaroo, available from http://www.food4rhino.com/project/kangaroo)

I'm also uploading here a couple of additional slightly more advanced example files.

(also included is the 'colourful' user object which creates custom previews for a list of objects)

Any questions or suggestions welcome.

Attachments:

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 17, 2016 at 11:47am

The files for the slider arm example

Attachments:

SliderArm.3dm, 315 KB
SliderArm.gh, 26 KB

Permalink Reply by Jon on May 23, 2016 at 3:27am

Hi Daniel,

I noticed that the sliding distance is limiting by ClampLength.

In your example 'ClampLength' is clear how it works. What a little bit confused me in this SliderArm example is the way to connect the 'Line' for ClampLength and how it relating to Lower- and UpperLimitation.

they have differently lower and upper limitation configuration between red/blue (L:10; U: 10000000) and yellow/green(L:3; H:19)...are those parameter meaning something..?

It would be nice if you could explain about that ;-)

Otherwise, awesome example!

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on May 17, 2016 at 12:44pm

Thanks Daniel, for the informative explanation.

Permalink Reply by taz on May 17, 2016 at 1:01pm

Mind blown. I can cancel my SolidWorks subscription...

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 17, 2016 at 1:36pm

Haha, thanks Taz, but I think it has a way to go yet.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone about features/workflows in existing mechanical modellers you would like to see (or equally, things existing tools handle badly which you would like to see done differently).

Permalink Reply by Jon on May 18, 2016 at 2:53am

great Job, thx!

Permalink Reply by Anders Holden Deleuran on May 18, 2016 at 2:57am

This is terrific, cheers Dan!

Permalink Reply by Soroush Garivani on May 20, 2016 at 5:34am

Hi Daniel

I thought i could use coincident and evaluate curve component to use a point as a Pivot in a pantograph / scissor, so there would be no need too shatter a line in the pivot point.

but it doesn't work!

could you please explain whats wrong?

Attachments:

Pantographic - Coincident.gh, 9 KB

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 20, 2016 at 7:46am

Hi Soroush,

In your definition you have nothing telling Kangaroo that those midpoints are related to the curves, so as far as it sees, they are just 2 floating points which are coincident, and totally separately there are 2 lines which preserve their length.

It does not connect them just because they come from the same upstream curves in grasshopper.

To make a scissor mechanism you need to actually split the lines at the pivot and tell Kangaroo that the segments on either side remain in a straight line using an angle goal - see the definition I posted here:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/sicssor-hinge

On a related note, something I was thinking of adding is a component that allows rigid polylines, or rigid point collections - they would operate in essentially the same way as the rigid bodies, but without requiring it to be a solid object.

Permalink Reply by Soroush Garivani on May 20, 2016 at 2:08pm

Thanks for your reply

One question though. so why does my definition works if I evaluate the curves at end or start? shouldn't it act like evaluating in the middle of the curves?

and I guess that would make it possible to evaluate a curve and make the pivot with the "rigid polylines" component.

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