Specifications
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The different types are described in detail in the reference manual
. For examples on how to use joints,
please download and study the following two examples:
• Slider crank in 2D
• Slider crank in 3D
The next chapter is Lesson 3: Drivers
.
Lesson 3: Drivers
Drivers create movement in a model. They are really functions of time determining the position of a joint or
the distance between two points or some other kinematic measure at any given time through the simulation
period.
There are various drivers available to create different types of time dependency. For a demonstration of the
different types, please download and study the Driver demo
.
Next up is Lesson 4: Kinematic Measures
.
Lesson 4: Kinematic Measures
You are not likely to have any sort of idea what a kinematic measure is. Don't worry - you're not supposed
to know about it. The concept was invented by AnyBody Technology as a way of describing dimensions in a
kinematic model that you might want to get information about or control with drivers. A joint angle or a
distance between two points are examples of kinematic measures. The position of the center of gravity of
the entire model or a subset of its segments are other examples.
If you define a kinematic measure in your model, then you can study its development. But more importantly
you can control it. You can add a driver to a kinematic measure, and that way control the movement of the
mechanism. Such a driver can be added even when the measure is a less tangible quantity like the collective
center of gravity that is not attached to a particular segment.
Joints can be understood as kinematic measures equipped with drivers. For instance, a spherical joint is a
distance between two points on two different segments that is driven to be zero. This means that, using
kinematic measures, you can define types of joints that are not available as predefined objects in AnyScript.
Do you remember the simple arm example of the "Getting Started with AnyScript" tutorial? That was a 2-D
model of an arm where we produced the movement by driving the angles of the shoulder and elbow joints
directly.