Linkage Program

The Watt parallel motion linkage is show on the internet numerous times. A simple “watt parallel motion” search for images yields enough results to make anyone happy. The interesting thing about these images is that they all look different. Well, there are a few variations that make me…

I have had two people mention that they wanted the linkage program to run on Windows XP. One person had told me that it crashed and I then changed the install program to fail if the system is XP and not Vista or Windows 7. Well, I finally…

Modified Freemantle Linkage or Evans Linkage The linkage above cannot be simulated in the Linkage program (See Linkage 2.0). This appears to be a valid mechanism because there are three anchors all used to position link 1 (in dark blue). I am trying to decide how to handle…

I searched high and low for information about icons in menus. The only thing I found was a lot of people discussing how to use SetMenuItemBitmaps(). Unfortunately, SetMenuItemBitmaps() is for setting the check mark bitmaps, the checked and unchecked image, of the menu item. I tried this in…

… or How I added something rather unimportant to the Linkage program but had to blog about it just to make a blog entry today. The Microsoft Ribbon Bar, which is just a toolbar designed to completely replace the program menu and toolbars, has an interesting feature that…

I went ahead and separated the View pane in the ribbon bar from the new Dimensions pane in the Linkage program. I am not sure how to label the “show dimensions” check box. Since it is in the Dimensions pane, I can’t really call it “dimensions.” What I…

I threw in a quick little feature to make the display of solid links more interesting. Solid Links The links with three connectors are drawn a little larger than the two-connector links. It would have been cool if I could figure out how the links all connected and…

Even though I could have used arbitrary units of measurement for displaying dimensions of parts, that would not have allowed the user the ability to switch units without then enlarging or shrinking their mechanism to get that change. For instance, the user makes something that is 10.000 units…

I am making good progress on the measurement/dimensions code for the Linkage program. All Things Measured The measurement feature is fully automatic. Enabling this by checking the Dimensions check box in the toolbar shows the measurements. Things that are noteworthy at the moment Anchor measurements are based on…

I was bored and added a fixed size video capture area. The area is centered in the window, even if the window is smaller than the video resolution, and the user can opt to show or hide a box around the area. Video Area The video is only…