Managing Contacts

You can define a mechanical contact between two or more components involved in a mechanism.

You can create a single engineering connection for several components at the same time by selecting two groups with multiple products, but each group must have at least one element.

To detect contacts, you can select any component at any level of the active product, except hidden 3DParts.

Before you begin: Open an assembly containing a mechanism.
See Also
Playing Mechanism Using the Compass
  1. From the Mechanical Systems Design section of the action bar, click Contact Connection .
  2. Click under Group 1.
    The Group1 selection panel opens.
  3. From the active product, select one or several components, and click OK.

    Note: Click a component again to remove it from the list.

    The names of the products are displayed in the Engineering Connection Definition dialog box.
  4. To remove a product from a group, select it in the list and click .
  5. To select all the products of a group, click .
  6. Use the same commands to add products to Group 2.
    Once selected, the products are highlighted in the 3D area.
  7. Click the Restitution Collision Model or Surfacic Contact Model tab, depending on the integrator you want to use.
  8. Specify the contact properties of the contact model. For more information, see About the DASSL Integrator and About the Symplectic Euler Integrator.

    The values of the contact properties are set by default.

  9. Optional: In the Surfacic Contact Model tab, specify the Mesh Properties:
    1. Select Visu mesh to use a standard visualization mesh, or Specified mesh to customize the mesh properties.
    2. Specify a value for the maximum penetration.
    3. If you selected Specified mesh, click Compute mesh.

      The Compute mesh option is only available if products are listed in Group1 and Group2.

    4. In the Meshing dialog box, for each Group, specify the chordal deviation (Sag) and the Max edge size, and click Compute Mesh to generate the meshes.
    A green icon appears next to Compute Mesh.
    Note: An orange icon appears if the mesh is not successfully computed. If so, make sure that:
    • The mesh computation is done.
    • No new part was added to the groups after the mesh computation.
    • No Sag or Max edge size values were modified after the mesh computation.
    Note: You can manage the accuracy of the mesh in the 3D area by accessing theCommon Preferences of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. It is recommended to use the default Fixed option and enter a SAG value adapted to your objective (visual quality of the mesh or simulation performance).

    For more information, see Meshing Properties.

The Contact Engineering Connection is created and appears in the tree under the Engineering Connections node of the active product.