Equipment Design provides a complete set of tools for modeling mechanical systems that are typically used in the manufacturing process. Such systems include robotic end-effectors (grippers, weldguns, etc.), positioning devices, stamping presses, milling machines, lathes, tracked vehicles, industrial robots, NC machines and coordinate measuring machines (CMMS). The target is generic modeling of forward-kinematic devices that can be driven in joint coordinates and inverse-kinematic devices that can be driven in cartesian toolpoint coordinates. Equipment Design allows you to define a mechanical system in terms of rigid bodies (called parts) and articulated joints. The parts may originate from CATIA, DELMIA, or other CAD sources. The joints may characterize a combination of mechanical constraints (such as rotation about a fixed axis) and geometric constraints (such as following the surface of a part). Finally, the mechanical system may include closed-kinematic loops, where a collection of parts forms a closed chain. The motion of these closed-kinematic loops may be automatic as a result of an internal iterative closed kinematic system solver or may be through explicit your defined symbolic relational expressions. After a device has been created, you may define a set of predefined positions (called "home positions") and a timetable to be used when moving between them. You can also set up device attributes such as joint travel limits and speed and acceleration limits. Tools are provided to directly manipulate the joints of a device or the cartesian toolpoint coordinates and observe the resulting configuration. Basic display attributes such as color, display mode, etc., will also be set at the device level. | |||||||