In a post yesterday, I wrote about how I wanted to have gears and links rotate freely on rotating inputs when a specific set of options are selected. I am at the point now where I think I know what to do. here is how it will work (if I implement it)…
There will be a new option for links and gears. The new link option will make the link spin freely on any input connector unless it is fastened to that connector. If a link or gear is fastened to an anchor connector then it will either not rotate at all and be fastened to the ground or it will be rotated by the input if the “spin freely” option is selected.
I can’t think of a better way to do it. I’ll keep thinking about it but this is the best I can come up with. There is one alternative that I have considered and that’s to add another option to “ground a gear” and not use fastening to make a gear fixed to the ground with no rotation. I would need to detect that a gear is fastened to an anchor and undo that and set this new option in older linkage files so it’s a bad solution. But it’s worse to have the fasten feature do two different things depending on the “spin freely” option.
This is tough issue so I’ll keep working on it.
Dave
I just discovered Linkage. This might have been mentioned elsewhere, but I was wondering if there was intent of adding a trunnion mounted actuator (cylinder) in the future? And then the location of the trunnion along the cylinder can be modified as desired. Unless there’s a work around applying features ‘representative’ of a trunnion mounted cylinder?
The work-around is to use one end of the actuator as the pivot point, or trunnion, and then set the length and throw as needed. The visual representation isn’t necessarily how the cylinder is made in the real-life. You can set the throw (the distance of travel) to be longer than the distance between the ends of the actuator with no ill effects.