Creating Basic Joints - simphysoftwares/SimPHY-docs GitHub Wiki

To create joints open the joint toolbar and then select any joint you want to attach with body.

We have Rope, Spring, Hinge, Weld, Distance Joint, Pulley, Wheel Joint and Prismatic Joints.

  1. To create constraint motion of any body i.e. to allow limited degree of freedom, Simphy uses many kinds of Joints like Distance joint, thread joint, pulley joint, hinge etc. which can be accessed in the Joint toolbar.
  2. Anchor points can be between two bodies or between background wall and any one body. If one end of the joint does not lie on the body then it gets clamped or hooked at the background wall.
  3. You can edit properties of Joints like size, color, opacity, damping in the property tab of any Joint as shown below. Real situations can be created by including damping.

Basic Joints

  • Rope Joint: It is an inextensible and unbreakable joint between any two bodies. Just select the icon in the Joint toolbar and click and drag the mouse to create a rope joint. Rope Joint gets slacked when its in compression.

  • Distance Joint: Just like Rope Joint except it keeps distance constant whether compressed or elongated, i.e. this joint doesn't slack.

  • Revolute Joint: Also called pin joint or hinge joint, it is a one-degree-of-freedom kinematic pair used frequently in mechanisms and machines. The joint constrains the motion of two bodies to pure rotation along a common axis. The joint does not allow translation, or sliding linear motion. Hinge allows rotation but stops translation.

  • Spring Joint: The spring acts like a piece of elastic that tries to pull the two anchor points together to the exact same position.

  • Pulley Joint: This joint is useful in making complex Atwood machines and follows the rules a pulley should follow. It can be made realistic by giving it moment of inertia taking rotation problems into account.

See the below videos to understand how to construct basic joints and how end points are selected automatically while making simulations. First video will reiterate the definitions above and second video will tell how to construct such joints.

Basic Joints Basic Joint Cons