Linkage Program

I changed the Linkage program so that a click anywhere within a link will select it. This is in addition to the already existing code that would detect a click anywhere within about 8 pixels of the edge of a link. That selection distance was also increased for…

Higher Quality Video Higher Quality Rendering The video creation feature now supports the standard quality and a higher quality setting. The standard quality is not very fast because of the time that is spent rendering the video frame. The higher quality rendering uses some anti-alias techniques to get…

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…