Rigid group + slider joint mechanic

[Anonymous]

Hello everybody,

I'm totally new to Fusion 360 (started earlier this week) and have been following few tutorials but my project is really basic/primitive (not really the kind of project Fusion 360 was designed for), so I started working on my own early on.
I need to reproduce an art installation I've made last year that was destroyed. I want to print it 3D but first I'd like to animate it directly through the software. The thing is I don't understand how to create a simple mechanism.
As you can see on my screen-capture, the mechanism is pretty straightforward : 2 axis (horizontal + vertical), 2 tubes (one going in the horizontal, on going through both axis), and a surface under these elements.
As you may have noticed, the 2 axis are linked to the surface, so I'd like to have a slide mechanic on each axis (I had no problem to figure out how to do this). The thing is that when I activate the animation, let's say on the horizontal, the tube on the right doesn't move. So I tried to create a rigid group between this tube and the horizontal axis, but still, the slider only affects the axis and not the tube.
What I need is to link the central tube with both axis, to link the right tube to the horizontal axis, then to link both axis to the surface with a slider movement. Is it possible? How can I do that?

Thank you very much for reading this, any sort of answer could help a lot as I have lots of trouble using this soft (I'm more used to work in InDesign/Illustrator/Glyphs and making books/posters/fonts). I hope that I was sort of understandable (my english is very bad as well, sorry).

Julien

[Anonymous]

Without access to the model, there's a limit to the help anyone here can offer.

Build it up in steps.  First, you need a Slider joint between each of the long "arms" and the table, to constrain their motion along the desired axis.  You'll then need a Pin-Slot joint between the vertical rod where the two arms cross, and each of the arms.  The second rod should need only a Rigid joint to the arm.  That's a total of 5 joints.  Add them one at a time, and make sure the motion is as-desired after adding each one.

Regards,

Ray L.

[Anonymous]

Hello Ray,

First of all, thank you for your fast answer. By accessing the model, do you mean accessing this URL? - http://a360.co/2scHFFj
I'm very new to this software and I feel a bit dumb so please excuse me if I ask silly thing. If this is not what you were talking about, please tell me how I can be more precise.

I tried to follow your instruction, but first I'm lost with "joint" and "as-built joint". I manage to create a slider with the 2 arms through as-built joint. But when I tried to do pin-slot, first of all I find it a bit difficult to choose which element I need to select + during my tries there was a lot of rotation of the rod. Somehow I managed to do the first arm, but when I wanted to do the same to the second one, it told me that there was a conflict between different joints (screen-capture).

Thanks again for the effort, I hope I'll be able to fix this soon enough.

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

Here are a couple of screencasts showing how I would do this.  The first is just cleaning up what you have so far, and the second is creating the joints themselves

Sorry @Anonymous if you were working on a response, don't mean to snipe your thread...

1: cleanup:

2: joints:

Jeff

[Anonymous]

Here's a link to my "fixed" version: http://a360.co/2sdM9LJ

A couple of things of note:

When saving components, be sure the TURN OFF all sketches.  When a sketch is enabled in a component, it will often make selecting specific geometry for joints in the assembly much more difficult.  You had sketches in the two sliding arms enabled.

I'm not sure exactly what was wrong with what you had, but I've sometimes found joints just get confused, and the only way to fix them is to delete them, and create new ones, which is what I did, and it all works as I think you wanted.

On the pin/slot joints, you have to adjust the X/Y/Z offset in the second joint so the pin is in EXACTLY the same position defined by the first joint.  This is why my second pin/slot joint has a 10mm Z offset.

Joints are frustrating to learn, but once it "clicks", the do REALLY make things a LOT simpler than the mates used in other CAD systems.  But, there are still some bugs in there....

Regards,

Ray L.

[Anonymous]

First of all, thank you very much both of you for your effort to help me understand! That wasn't an easy task, but I did understand what I was doing and not just making the exact same thing.
The mechanic is working fine, I also understood that when using "cmd" on the computer, you can move the pieces of your build (as I told you, I started few days ago without any knowledge in 3D mechanics and  3D software ;). That's how I also was able to see if the mechanic was working correctly (studying the pointer behavior in the video lol). Also, on the web version, is it possible to do the same thing? The "shift" command does work, but not "cmd".
It does suck to chose a solution when you have 2 people helping. I don't get the "kudo" thing : can I give both kudos? Does it matter to have kudos? If I had to chose the final solution, I'll go with the video, so tell me what to do.

Julien

[Anonymous]

EDIT : OK I finally chose the video on which I relied to fix my issues. Gave some kudos also 😉
Thank you very much, nice and easy answer from both of you, really appreciate the care.

Julien