Simple mechanical linkage doesn't look like it can be done in Maya?

[thresholdengineering]

I'm hoping there is an obvious solution I'm overlooking here, but...

I've created a simple mechanism in Solidworks that i want do render in Maya. It animates correctly in SW, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to do it in Maya. (The attached MP4 was done in SW)

All motion is actually 2D, so it will be easiest to describe it as a square where each corner is a pivot. So as one of the vertical segments swings on it's lower pivot, the top and opposite vertical segments follow along always maintaining a closed rhomboid shape.

I've tried hinge constraints, skeleton joints and child-parent relationships, but it seems the closed loop is not allowed for any of these methods. Nothing can have more than one parent.

As I said it's easy to do in SW with simple mates, and the motion solves correctly with no problem. However SW's rendering and lighting is terrible (at least with the basic package) And I love Arnold's render results.

Does Maya have simple mates like SW and I'm just not finding them?

[thresholdengineering]

(just bringing back to the top)

I'm really surprised no one has run into this in the past?

[thresholdengineering]

This is referred to as a "four-bar linkage"

[osidedan]

Maya doesn't have mates like Solid Works as far as I know, but you can fake it with some creative rigging! I made a mock-up of your scene, and was able to duplicate the motion with a 3 joint IK chain, and a locator to tell the IK handle where to be. 

I'm attaching an example scene, and a video of it in motion so you can see the result. The main motion driving this animation is the up/down of the bottom bar, and the rotation of the right bar. The top and left bar are driven by the IK chain. the IK follows the locator that is parented to the right bar. Be mindful of the pivot locations of each bar, and the hierarchy of the things in the scene, as those are important to get it to work. Let me know if you need more info on the setup, and I will gladly explain further. Hope this helps!

PS the maya scene is inside of the zip file because for whatever reason the forum isn't letting me attach a .ma or .mb file?