Closing mechanism

[Anonymous]

Hello folks,

Im currently working on closing mechanism of some sort. I want it to be animated, but really cant find the rigth constraints and joints apperently. Ive attached a picture which should explain how it works quite well. In the assembly view everything works fine, but in the dynamic simulation enviroment it just does not. It says it doesnt have any degree of freedem which is wrong because I can move it in the assembly.

Thanks in advance. 🙂

Greetings

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I personally like to use sketches for running things like this. For me, it makes it easier to animate things. And I would reccommend animating through Inventor Studio rather than through driven constraints. But if I had to do this through constraints, I would drive an angular one between the two arms. It would just take a little math to find out what angle you need to be at when you're fully closed and what angle (180) when fully opened. That can get confusing though for inventor because when you go from 180 to 179, it could bend either way and techincally be correct. Angular constraints often get confusing in this way. Put into a quick demo:

_/ - I dimenios these two lines to be at 135 degrees apart and they're how I want them! Great! I go to 180 then back to 135. My results may be:

_/ Exactly what I want or _   - still 135 degrees but not at all what I wanted.

                                          \

When animating something angular, I suggest setting up so that the angle can never be zero also. 180 can be problematic too but 0 I avoid always (when animating).

I would make a part with a sketch in it that draws a simple line diagram of your moving parts. Then I would create a line that is perpendicular to one of the two (in my mind, the "right" leg, not the "left). Then I would set an angle constraint between the perpendicular line and the "left" leg line and set it to say... 110 degs. This will give you a separation betwen the legs (lol) of 20 degrees. Set up a custom angular parameter in your part file probably named "angle" set to 20 deg and set the angular dimension to "90+angle". You can now change your angle between 20 and 180 without consequence. Now set that custom parameter to export. Constrain your parts to the sketch in the part file and load inventor studio. Pick the angle parameter as a parameter favorite and animate it from 20 to 180 degrees. Render animation.

I realized about half way through typing this that my explanation was becoming quite lengthy and it shows you as a New Member to the forums. I'm not sure how new that makes you to the software. Does all of this make sense? I can make a demonstration video if you like...

[JDMather]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

... but in the dynamic simulation enviroment ....

---

Your image is of the assembly environment - not the dynamic simulation environment.

Can you attach the assembly here?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the fast help. I want this to be in the assembly because I want to have a fully working and manufacture ready mechanism. Its not so much about the exact mathematicle path or the animation but about the correctness of the build. Ive tried using angular constraints with start and end points but sometimes Inventor just doesnt accept it or says parts have too many constraints. So is there a way to this in the assambly?

And yes Im fairly new to inventor. My university uses Creo, but for a project (we had to construct a gearbox) I used Inventor and I think Im sticking to it.

Greetings

PS: Why cant I upload .rar files containing the assambly?

PPS: Also if you want me to translate anything for you feel free to ask 😄

[JDMather]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

....

PS: Why cant I upload .rar files containing the assambly?

 .... 😄

---

Rather than *.rar use Windows to Zip the folder.

Right click on the folder and select Send to Compressed (*.zip) Folder.

If the resulting file is too large to attach here - then upload to Autodesk 360 and create an url for download and supply the url here.

And all of those i in circles indicate problems.  I would be able to figure it out from the assembly without translation.

[Anonymous]

Here is the project file. I dont have a solution to fix those errors and also I didnt find any good tutorial or reference on that topic. Id be glad with either.

Greetings

File is too big 😕

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tiywfdh9veujsrs/AABqz4CZ5towJZp6RPW-0dVda?dl=0

[WHolzwarth]

It's good practice, adding sub-assemblies for tasks like that. I've added 3 new files and the main assy for replacement.

Now you can drive it two ways:

- In normal modeling environment right-click on Angle:1(Winkel:1) and click on Drive (Bewegen)

- In Dynamic simulation environment just click on the black triangle. Don't care about the messages.

Notice that i in circle before Revolution:3. You can suppress the last message by un-hooking Min. and Max. in the dof 1(R) section of it's properties window.

But amazing to see, that hooks are coming back again.

Perhaps Jeffrey knows why that's behaving this way. For me it's another signal, that DS should be working better.

Walter

[JDMather]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

File is too big 😕

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tiywfdh9veujsrs/AABqz4CZ5towJZp6RPW-0dVda?dl=0

---

I don't go to 3rd party drop boxes - only Autodesk 360.

[WHolzwarth · Accepted solution]

Here are all files together with my changes in a zip. 

I've added Julian's IAM separately (Luke-initial.iam).

Comment for Julian: Design Data and Templates in a P+G normally are waste of filesize. They are needed only in rare cases.

Walter

[Anonymous]

Thank you! Thats how I wanted it to work. Now I just want to change one more thing: I only used this slider part at the end because I was trying to find a solution to my initial problem. The plane on which slider is on should be sloped and the slider itself should just be a cylinder. Im going to try doing it myself, but it might just not work out 😄 Im looking for the joint which equals the tangential constraint.

Greetings

[Anonymous]

I got it somewhat working. I know put the closing mechanism into a new assembly and all the animations are gone. Is there a way to get them back?

Also is there a way to mirror an assembly so Inventor does not put into a new file?

Greetings

[JDMather · Accepted solution]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

... put the closing mechanism into a new assembly and all the animations are gone. 

---

If you put an assembly with free degrees of freedom (motion) as a sub-assembly in a new assembly - you must right click on the sub-assembly in the browser and set to Flexible.

iProperties indicates that you have not installed Sercvice Pack 2.