Monday March 24, 2014 at 5:04pm
Rigid Groups in SOLIDWORKS Motion
SOLIDWORKS Motion is a great tool for simulating the movement of complex mechanisms. It allows engineers to quantify kinematic and dynamic performance parameters such as velocity, acceleration, energy, torque, power etc.
However, Motion users should be aware that care needs to be taken when creating force or torque based results as many real-life mechanisms have in-built redundancies that cause problems for mathematical simulations. To understand more about this, please search for the Technical Document on 'Redundancies' on www.solidsolutions.tv website.
One very powerful way of reducing redundancies is to effectively remove mates that are not important to the mechanism by creating 'Rigid Groups'. This capability can be used, for instance, where a set of parts are in the Motion study that do not move with respect to each other. If they are included in the Motion, all the mates that they are associated with will be solved and included in the redundancy calculations. However, if they are added to a 'Rigid Group' then they mates between them are ignored.
To achieve this right mouse button click on the part(s) and select 'Add to New Rigid Group' as shown below ...
The Rigid Group appears at the bottom of the Motion tree.
Andy Fulcher
Technical Manager
Solid Solutions Management Ltd