Is it possible to generate the complete possible motion envelope of a mechanism in Creo 4.0?

[HanSolo97]

Currently the motion envelope is only velocity based. User will have to set the velocity at which each actuator operate and their sequence based on time and the motion envelope is generated based on the given motion the designer desires.

But my requirement is to get the complete possible motion envelope of a linkage. 
Say there are 3 actuators, having stroke 100 - 1000 mm and the step values are in increments of 100 mm.
So there will be 10 possible positions (100,200,300,400....1000) for each actuators.
The total possible combinations considering all 3 actuators will be 10 X 10 X 10 = 1000 combinations.
I need a motion envelope of the linkage considering all these 1000 locations.

Is there any workaround to get this motion envelope using Creo Mechanism ?
 

[pausob]

I'm fairly certain that there isn't a general algorithm to find the motion envelope for a mechanism - so you have to take the "brute-force" approach of iterating through the valid combinations of joint settings, then merging all cases.  I could see setting up a clever user-defined motion profile for your 3 servos in order to get this 3-level iteration loop in Creo Mechanism.

Have you tried assigning a motor to each of your actuators, set to drive harmonic motion (maybe at different frequencies?)

I'm thinking with enough runtime, you could get a pretty close answer.

[HanSolo97]

Hey Pausob,
Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into this approach and get back.

[tbraxton]

This is a great use case for the Behavioral Modeling Extension (BMX). BMX coupled with mechanism should be able to do what you are seeking to do. You can run a feasibility/optimization study and by setting the goal of maximizing the volume of the motion envelope while varying the inputs on your actuators, the process will be automated.

Without the use of BMX you will need to figure out how to bound the solution space and use mechanism functionality to iterate to a solution.

[HanSolo97]

Hi tbraxton,
Thanks for the suggestion. I will definitely look into this and get back.