When you enter the Dynamic Simulation environment with an assembly created in Autodesk Inventor, version 2008 or later, unless you deselect Automatically Convert Constraints to Standard Joints in the Dynamic Simulation Setting dialog box, the software automatically creates the minimum necessary standard joints by converting constraints involved in the global assembly’s motion. At the same time, the software automatically eliminates redundant constraints . It is especially good at determining that degrees of freedom left on nuts, bolt, washers, and other fasteners do not contribute to the movement of the mechanism and, in fact, are locked down during simulation . When you add constraints, this feature updates the affected joints immediately.
Design Accelerator provides several toolsets to make modeling more efficient and accurate for such tasks as shaft, gear, belt, pulley, and bolted connection generation. Joints are automatically created for Spur Gears created in Design Accelerator. The Automatically Convert Constraints to Standard Joints setting must be active and the gear set must be set to Flexible. If flexibility is turned off, the gear set joints are suppressed. When flexibility is turned on, the joints are unsuppressed. The simulation parameters automatically created are efficiency, helix angle, and pressure angle. The gear set parameters are fixed by Design Accelerator and not editable in Dynamic Simulation. Rolling joints which provide access to the Efficiency parameter are Cylinder on Plane, Cylinder on Cylinder, and Cylinder in Cylinder.
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Declining automatically created standard joints
If you do not want to accept one or more of the standard joints created automatically by conversion of Assembly constraints, do the following:
- On the ribbon, click
Dynamic Simulation tab
Manage panel
Simulation Settings
. - Uncheck Automatically Convert Constraints to Standard Joints.
- If you want to delete all of the Standard Joints, click No.
- Click Apply. If you previously clicked Yes, all Standard Joints remain and you can selectively delete them.
- To selectively create a standard joint automatically, use Convert Assembly Constraints
to create standard joints one joint at a time. Note: Only standard joints can be created automatically by converting assembly constraints. Joints, such as 2D contact, rolling, and sliding, can only be created manually. - For the standard joints you want to create manually, use Insert Joint
to create the joint. You now have only those standard joints you want in your mechanism.
Automatically converting constraints in mechanisms
Once you uncheck this option and save the mechanism, this feature is unavailable for the mechanism until you again check the option. In addition, for mechanisms created in versions before Autodesk Inventor 2008, Automatically Convert Constraints to Standard Joints is not the default. Therefore, you should set this option immediately after opening Dynamic Simulation if you want to use it.
- On the ribbon, click
Dynamic Simulation tab
Manage panel
Simulation Settings
.
- Click Automatically Convert Constraints to Standard Joints to set the automatic Dynamic Simulation translator to on.
The default is on for mechanisms created in Version 2008 or later of Autodesk Inventor.
As soon as you click OK after setting the translator to on, the translator automatically deletes all current joints and converts assembly motion constraints to standard joints.
- Click OK or Apply.
Both save your settings, but OK also closes the dialog box.
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Editing automatically converted standard joints
You can edit and modify the joint coordinate system of automatically created standard joints. Depending on the joint, you have access to different editable entities and the ability to change origin or/and direction of the joint coordinate system axis. You cannot change the joint category. That is, a revolution joint cannot be edited to become a 2D contact.
For example, the affect of editing a revolution joint and inverting the Z axis, is the rotational velocity inverts from a positive or negative value.
For a complete list of editable joint entities see the topic Test and modify joints.