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Lesson

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the General connection and redundancies in
the mechanism model.

A general connection is one in which no specific degree of freedom is explicitly set. You will be able to fix
degrees of freedom one-by-one with this connection by using regular placement constraints, such as Align,
Mate, etc.

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Once you have defined some constraints, Degrees of Freedom will start to be eliminated. Any open DOF
will still be available for the mechanism. The resulting DOF will be shown on the symbol for the connection.

Before going any further with the general connection, it is a good time to talk about redundancies in the
model. What are redundancies? Any time you add two or more connections to a model that provide for the
correct motion of an assembly but do not further constrain the model, you have redundancies. A great
example is a door assembled using two pin connections for each hinge.

Once you add the first pin connection, you have fixed the door to having only one rotational degree of
freedom. Adding a second pin connection will not prevent the door from swinging properly, but it does not
restrict any additional movement at all, and therefore is not necessary.

Why do we care? Unfortunately, redundancies in the model can lead to incorrect calculations of load
reactions and forces in a dynamic analysis. The goal then, should be to evaluate other potential
combinations of connections that will give the same overall DOF restrictions, but not cause redundancies in
the model.

So, with the door example, an alternative might be to use a planar connection that restricts 3 DOF (1
translational and 2 rotational) and a bearing that restricts 2 DOF (2 translational). This leaves one rotational
DOF, which is what a pin connection gives us.

Open up your Robot.asm assembly that we worked with a while back. Use Mechanism, Connect to
return it to its starting position, and then delete all of the servo motors and the analysis. Create a new servo
motor on the pin joint that connects Robot3 to Robot 2, and use a Ramp with the following values: A = 0, B
= 6. This will move Robot 3 60 degrees in 10 seconds.

Once you have this defined, create a new kinematic analysis where this motor runs from Start to End, and
run the analysis to make sure that the arm is moving up 60 degrees during the analysis. If it is, we are
ready to add our general connection to Robot 4. Use Mechanism, Connect to go back to the starting
position.

Return to Application, Standard to get back to regular assembly mode. We will start by editing the
definition of Robot4. When we do this, we see the following.

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We can see the current pin connection. We will click on the green “+” button to add another connection.
Change the type to General, and we will see the following.

Before we pick any references, we are going to explicitly define an Align and Oriented condition, as shown
in the next figure.

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Then, select the top flat surface of Robot2 and the top flat surface of Robot4, as shown in the next figure.

When we do this, we will be removing two rotational degrees of freedom from this robot component. If we
look at our model tree and expand the connections, and drill down into our general connection, we can see
that we still have three translational and one rotational degree of freedom open on this connection.

Return to Mechanism mode, and re-run the analysis. This time, the robot 4 component does not rotate up,
instead it remains parallel to the ground.

Close this assembly without saving.

A general connection is used to allow for traditional placement constraints, while still allowing for motion of
the component (unlike the rigid connection), but does not have a completely open DOF state, like the 6DOF
connection.

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Remember to watch out for redundancies when you run a dynamic analysis. Use the DOF measure to
check how many degrees of freedom are still open and use the redundancies measure to determine if you
have redundancies in your assembly connections.

None

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