Speed, Acceleration, etc., in the Linkage Program

I plan on adding speed, acceleration, and maybe other information, to the Linkage program. People have asked about force (which is weird since threes no mass to the links so there is no force required to move them) and sometimes they ask for other things that are so complicated sounding that I can’t even remember. Sometimes they ask for features that involve gravity or springs, even though they don’t always realize that’s what they are asking for. But after a few requests for speed and acceleration, I realize that it should beast to compute those for every connector and point in the mechanism. And once they are calculated, I can add a check box to the properties to include that data in the export of motion data. And finally, and the most interesting part of this, is that I can allow a user to make a connector or point have a name that is the speed or acceleration data of some other connector or point. Doing that lets the users decide where to show the data on screen and in their printed mechanisms. A user would just add a point and then while entering a name for it, select some sort of “data from…” option that lets them pick another connector and select what data to use. It’s all very clean sounding to me. Well, if someone wants a chart, they’re going to have to do that themselves from exported data. That would be asking a lot of me to make a chart!