KITCAD · Kinematics interactive tools for functional cad modelling of mechanisms

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Project objective

Research objectives and content CAD systems offer several powerful tools for rapid and realistic geometric modelling of rigid mechanical assemblies. However, for systems having moving parts, as for example those arising in the field of mechatronics, present CAD programs still fall short from supporting a key functionality for their design, namely motion. This project aims at integrating real-time kinematics and dynamics simulation capabilities into a CAD system such as to make virtual kinematic mechanism design possible. The approach consists of employing well-known techniques of multibody dynamics for efficiently generating and solving the equations of motion of the system on the one hand, and devising algorithms that bring a given CAD representation of the geometric relationships between the parts and assemblies into a suitable kinematic description on the other hand. The challenge lies in the recognition of a minimal set of joints, bodies and constraints that produce the same motion as the original set of CAD constraints, but with a reduction of the number of iterative equations from maybe hundreds or even thousands to perhaps ten or even less. This can be achieved by employing newly developed symbolical and topological kinematic processing methods together with a learning database of already processed and optimised constraint patterns. Training content (objective, benefit and expected impact) The objective of the training is to gather experience in the following five areas: (1 ) theoretic foundations of CAD systems; (2) practical usage of CAD systems; (3) multibody modelling and simulation; (4) numerical and graph-theoretic methods for mechanism analysis; and (5) virtual reality simulation. The targeted benefit lies, besides in my own training, in the extension of an existing Swiss CAD system, developed for small and medium companies in Europe, with virtual reality kinematic mechanism design capabilities, allowing for a more rapid and cost efficient design of mechanisms and mechatronic systems. Links with industry / industrial relevance (22) The planning and execution of the project shall be conducted under involvement of the Swiss CAD company Precisionsoft, with which the host institution has also ongoing collaboration in the subject area of the project.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• GRAZ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY · GRAZCoordinatorAustria
• Not availableCity levelGermany

Links

• View on CORDIS