Joints

[keithd]

What I'm trying to do is dirt simple and is probably easy. But I've tried everything I can think of and can't make it work.

I have three components, 1, 2, and 3.

I have a revolute joint defined between 1 and 2. The animation works perfectly.

I want to attach component 3 to component 2 and have it move along with 2 when the joint animates.

I've tried rigid joints and rigid groups between components 2 and 3. But no matter what I do, when I animate the joint, component 3 does not move.

What's the trick?

Thanks,

--

Keith

[josef.kucera]

Hi Keith,

can you File >  Export (*.f3d) your design and attach it here so we can take a look at it and try to help?

Regards,

Josef

[etfrench]

Try a motion link.

[keithd]

Never mind. I think I figured it out by watching a few YouTube videos.

It seems that both a Rigid Joint and a Rigid Group actually did what I wanted. It is just that I was clicking on "Animate Joint" in the drop-down menu for the joint. That only animates that one joint in isolation. What I needed to be clicking on was "Animate Model", or manually dragging the component. When I do that the two components move together as I expected.

I still have a couple things I haven't quite figured out. One is why sometimes when I try to drag a component to animate the joint it works perfectly, and sometimes it doesn't. I'm not sure what I'm doing to get out of the mode where dragging animates, or what I do to get back into that mode.

Thanks,

--

Keith