Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

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r-frank
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by r-frank »

Hi there.

Surfing the net i just stumbled over Project Chrono.

Apart from its different license than FreeCAD it seems to be perfect for such things.
According to the manual/tutorials for example exporting a step file from FreeCAD,
importing it into Chrono and setting up joints and an actuator and animating everything
seems possible.

Maybe i will find some time to investigate further ...

Roland
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microelly2
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by microelly2 »

Yes looks interesting, never heard before.
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Mika38
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by Mika38 »

Dear All,

I'm pleased to see that my proposition interest you. I was busy during the last few days, but now I have time to push this idea forward.
triplus wrote:This could end up being different effort but likely Assembly/Kinematic will end up sharing common things. And if a good coder with sensible ideas takes the job likely up to 2 years of work needed. For first production ready results to emerge.
Thank Triplus for the info. Let's see how it's look like in 2 years 8-).

I will list below all the links posted in the last posts and try to see what we can with it.
r-frank wrote:For 2D you could take a look at Linkage.

For 3D you could have a look at Solvespace Linkages.
Thanks for the links Roland (r-frank). I don't know those softwares. I will try to test them. And see what they can achieved. Also, a benchmark of there interfaces would be really useful for future reference.
ulrich1a wrote: Even the model shown in this thread, was made first as a sketch: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... ed#p158672
Ulrich
Thank you very much for this link Ulrich1a. Do you have a more precises link to a tutorial, or a resource, to achieved what you sent on this other post? I would like to reproduced what you did, and if I have time create a tutorial specific for FreeCAD.
r-frank wrote:Surfing the net i just stumbled over Project Chrono.
Apart from its different license than FreeCAD it seems to be perfect for such things.
According to the manual/tutorials for example exporting a step file from FreeCAD,
importing it into Chrono and setting up joints and an actuator and animating everything
seems possible.

Maybe i will find some time to investigate further ...

Roland
Thank again for the link Roland. I would love to see the result of your investigation on that direction. The Chrono's engine seems to be able to achieved the very thing I want to create in FreeCAD. The license is BSD 3 (http://projectchrono.org/about/) which seems compatible to the GPL licence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses. Also, the examples of output looks great, see figure below. I will come back to it after an investigation on Linkage (2D) and SolvesSpace Linkage (3D).

Thank you all. It seems that I'm in the right place to make something happen.
Don't hesitate to share other links or macros which are related to a kinematic scheme application.

Have fun,

Mika
Attachments
Chono project screenshot from there main page.
Chono project screenshot from there main page.
Chono project.png (217.69 KiB) Viewed 2981 times
;) Le chemin est long, mais la voie est libre :D The journey is long but the way is free 8-)
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by kkremitzki »

I also had looked at Project Chrono around the time of the Google Summer of Code discussion earlier this year, and I think it'd be a solid choice for a general dynamics workbench.

Also just for viewing material I watched a very interesting video recently about PyDy, a Python library for solving multibody dynamics problems. It includes a quick overview of the theory and might be useful to some:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdo2NYtA-xY
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by Jee-Bee »

kkremitzki wrote:Also just for viewing material I watched a very interesting video recently about PyDy, a Python library for solving multibody dynamics problems. It includes a quick overview of the theory and might be useful to some:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdo2NYtA-xY
Didn't know this one thanks
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by r-frank »

We discussed animation in FreeCAD some time ago in the german sub-forum, see here(also with my four-bar linkage example).
I also did a video tutorial on YouTube (with german audio) about animating the four-bar linkage using sketches and animation workbench.
Mika38 wrote:Don't hesitate to share other links
For completeness, at the time of investigating animation workbench i also did an animation test with V-Rep pro Edu.
Exporting from FreeCAD as STL and importing in V-Rep was a no-brainer ...
Setting up the Joints was a little bit tricky (I needed the help of the coppelia forum ...)
What i found too complex for my situation as a normal CAD user was setting up the actuating forces ...
I'll try to find some time this evening or tomorrow to post the files and screenshots in the user showcase forum.

[Edit] Found time to create a post in the Users Showcase.
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Mika38
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by Mika38 »

I just tested Linkage 3.4.2 and it is great. It works on windows 7 pretty well. No ubuntu version.
I will try to give an overview of my experience with this software.
link: http://blog.rectorsquid.com/linkage-mec ... simulator/

List of function of this program :
- create revolute, prismatic, gears (no inside gear) and sliding on curve
- create linkage between joint, joint linkage to create part
- boolean operations (top mid figure)
- create rotating/translating input
- change layout of part to make it look like realistic.
- anchor point, Draw motion path, export path it in text
- lock dimensions of a connector or a part, modify dimension of the mechanism in 1 click, give exact dimension
- snap at joint point pretty well, align, grid
- automatic naming and colouring of connector/part and joint (number for part, letter of joint)
- animate in three modes: normal, interactive with slider for each input, Manuel which is automatic with one slider for all input
- show in animation which joint are over-constraint, "pin" the mechanism at one position, select filming area
- library of sample
- export as Image/ avi / DXF
- show a list of part
- automatically create dimension
- undo, save, copy, paste, select all, select specific element
- great documentation in pdf
- ultra permissive licence
- and more

Some small problem of interfaces in my opinion:
- need to right click to create a joint (very strange at first)
- no menu with all the function

Function not available:
- optimise dimension of mechanism in function of a desired path

In conclusion, Linkage is really interesting. We should inspire our self from it. This program have all you need to design a plan mechanism, and it manages to stay simple. We should use the sample mechanism as unit test for our workbench.

next step workbench of Solvespace Linkages
Attachments
screenshot of Linkage 3.4.2 on windows 7.<br />www.linkagesimulator.com
screenshot of Linkage 3.4.2 on windows 7.
www.linkagesimulator.com
linkage test2.png (213.88 KiB) Viewed 2868 times
Last edited by Mika38 on Wed Mar 22, 2017 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
;) Le chemin est long, mais la voie est libre :D The journey is long but the way is free 8-)
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r-frank
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by r-frank »

Mika38 wrote:Don't hesitate to share other links or macros which are related to a kinematic scheme application.
There is also
HOTINT
DYNAMECHS

Right now i am examining Freedyn which seems pretty easy to handle from a user point of view.

Roland
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by eggy »

I just looked into Freedyn. It seems like HOTINT with better graphics. What do you know about it?

I will play more with it this weekend.
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Re: Proposition of new workbench: Kinematic Scheme

Post by chrisb »

eggy wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:27 pm I just looked into Freedyn. It seems like HOTINT with better graphics. What do you know about it?
I'm sad to say that Roland (r-frank) died end of last year in a car accident. The brand new version 0.17 is dedicated to him.
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