Creating Planar Joints

You can create a planar joint to translate and rotate two bodies along a plane.

This task shows you how to:

See Also
About Joints

Specify the Definition Properties

  1. From the Mechanism section of the action bar, click Joint .
  2. In the dialog box, select Planar from the list of joint types.
  3. Select the two markers between which to create the joint.
    1. Click the From marker field and select a marker in the work area.
    2. Click the To marker field and select a marker in the work area.

    Tips:
    • To edit the selected markers, click and select Edit. The Markers dialog box opens.
    • To modify your selection, click and select Clear selection. You can select another marker in the work area or in the tree.

  4. Select a plane between the X-Y, Y-Z, and Z-X plane.
    The corresponding translation and rotation states appears in the States table.
  5. Optional: In the States table, specify values to control the joint motion. To do so, in each row:
    1. Select the cell corresponding to the value to define.
    2. Select the check box under the table.
      The cell appears in blue and becomes editable.

    3. Double-click the cell and specify the value by entering a value or by using the arrows.

      Note: Cells with values specified manually appear with a yellow background.

    Notes:
    • Each row corresponds to a translation or rotation degree of freedom. The number of rows depend on the joint type.
    • If the lower and upper limits are not applicable, no check box appears in the corresponding row or column.

Edit the Joint

  1. To edit a joint, in the tree, do one of the following:
    • Double-click a joint.
    • Click a joint and select Edit Feature on the context toolbar.
  2. In the dialog box, edit the joint parameters.
  3. Click .