Exploring fusion of objects, shaft

[BillM]

Art

I've been trying to reason out the logic behind the fuse operation.

I start with an asset that's a horizontal bar with its shaft defined at the left end of the bar. I add it to the workspace. I then add the bar again attached to the shaft of the first bar but this time I change its angle on the shaft (e.g. 30 deg). The two bars correctly appear with the 30 degree angle between them.

I've tried to fuse the bars:

First try: I selected the 30 degree bar first and the horizontal bar second, then select fuse. The horizontal bar snaps to the orientation of the 30 deg bar.

Second try:
I selected the horizontal bar first and the 30 degree bar second, then select fuse. The 30 deg bar snaps to the orientation of the horizontal bar.

I've tried combinations of locking the bars to the common shaft, setting the bars as Rotational lock but the result on fuse is always the same...the second bar selected snaps to the orientation of the first.

I beginning to wonder if that is the way the fuse between two objects on a shaft was designed to operate.

Bill

[ArtF]

Hi Bill:

No, you've found a bug there. They should simply fuse at the spot and in proper orientation as they sit at fusetime.
I must have screwed up a matrix, Ill fix it up and let you know.

Art

[ArtF]

Hi Bill:

Version 1.14B is uploading now. It fixes the fusing of objects, they may now be in any orientation or placement, need not touch or anything
and physically simply make the object into one object. It also fixes a problem with the control hulls by making them match up properly
as well as I found trouble there.
I also added an Ortho camera ( checkbox on sim screen.), you can use this to switch to the orthogonal mode display Gearotic has.
The skybox is off in this mode as ortho mode has no perspective. Objects do not shrink as they go off into the distance. This is actually
the typical mode of a cad program, but I dont think it helps a lot in placement, I add it simply as an optional aid for those instances
where it may help judge sizes without parallax having so drastic an effect.

Art

[BillM]

Art

I've loaded V1.14B.

The Orthgraphic view has been a helpful one. Previously when designing the gravity escapement, I'd attach extra shafts to an object but rotating the object would then leave the extra shafts behind.

I've now decided to create pins that I would then fuse onto objects such as the driver disk or the escapement arms. Placement of these pins is much more accurate now that the parallax effect is eliminated with the Orthographic view.

The corrections you made to fusing works well. As a side note, the Undo operation now operates correctly on fused items.

Bill

[BillM]

Art

Another thought about the Fuse option. Under normal circumstances when you create an asset the shape needs to be convex. With patience, it should be possible to create a concave hull shape by fusing together a bunch of smaller convex shapes.

I don't know if this would allow for the creation of a verge/crown wheel escapement but the thought would be intriguing.

Bill M

[ArtF]

Bill:

Yes, using fusing any hull construct will work as they are simply concatenated on to the new single object. In theory quite a complex hulled object
can be made, though I'm not sure how that might affect speed. I'll keep my eye on that. Thanks for all your testing, Ticker gets better each bug and
may one day be ready for a full release. I think I need to add "Add Primitive" for quick additions of planes, rods, cones and cylinders as
raw objects for quickly building a stage upon which the various objects can interface.
Im continuing to play with various ways to setup the staging.

Thx
Art

[BillM]

Art

Attached is an experiment to create a crown by fusing multiple 15degree segments that I created using Fusion360. I'm not sure how to interpret the results just yet.

I placed the Crown with its axis at 90degrees to the work bench. The model is not stable and the Crown does not rotate. Eventually the Crown flips teeth downward toward the work bench and goes unstable.

I imagine that the Crown's hull structure may be taxing the physics computations. I've looked at the Forces during simulation and also at the Cartesian view. I've played with the mass of the support post to be 100 and the Crown and its shaft to be 0.1.

I'll continue to play with this structure except keeping the Crown horizontal which does seem to work.

BillM

[ArtF]

Thanks Bill:

Ill do an analysis

Art

[ArtF]

Hi Bill:

First..awesome crown. That is built very well. The problem isn't the crown itself. I noticed you have a shaft inside a shaft where they
join to the vertical shaft. (if selected you can see there are two there.) If I erase that shaft the physics start to work more normally
but a swinging motion gets created.

I do see the real trouble is the orientation locking and position locking. They are causing havoc because of the way they
are implemented. It seems Orientation lock doesn't like anything off of the Z-- axis. Rotating the crown to the Y-- axis makes
the orientation lose its mind. I will recode this to a new constraint type as Im not happy with the way those locks
operate. The crown itself seems fine, if a bevel were used to get that 90 degree change to the Y it likely would work good,
but Ill let you know when I manage to fix the code on position lock and orientation lock.

Art

[BillM]

Art

I started to play with the vertical crown gear but created a bracket to mount the crown in a vertical position. That attempt did not work too well, the secondary shaft mounted to the bracket was not stable when the crown gear was mounted on it. I then read your comment about bevel gear and that gave me a work around for the craziness of the horizontal axis of the crown gear.

The attached zip file uses bevel gears as mounting points for a verge-like construction.

The pallets need some work probably are too thick and positioning is still tricky. Movement is a bit jerky but not bad for a first attempt.

There was some rotational movement of the crown relative to the horizontal bevel's shaft so I fused the two together. I added a bevel gear set to the end of that horizontal shaft in an attempt to provide some stability. I notice that the horizontal shaft starts to move around on the right hand bevel gear set. That motion causes trouble between the crown and the pallets. This is definitely a work in progress.



BillM