What does this icon mean? 1

[cinnamongirl]

I was given an assembly file that contains and unkown icon, it's the one right next to the assembly icon on the model tree. Can someone please tell me what it means?

 

[Eltron]

Search the help for Layout.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

Dan's Blog

 

[KevinDeSmet]

It's supposed to represent a four bar linkage. Layout is primarily useful and thus used for mechanism design. However I have found Layout to be suspiciously buggy, unfortunate too, because the idea behind Layout is good!

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[cinnamongirl]

Thanks, that was very helpful. And it actually represents all types of linkages, not just a four-bar.

 

[cinnamongirl]

Actually this brings up another question. I had indeed created a lever arm mechanism that lifts a platform along a pair of rails. Sometimes it would work by selecting one of the components and dragging the mouse, other times it would lock up in place and not move at all, and other times I'd get mate errors. Is this a bug? It was built using concentric mates (plus one "Limit Angle" to keep it from going past the intended point). Would a linkage make it smoother?

 

[kellnerp]

cinnamongirl
Start a new thread and we can beat that one to death.

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[KevinDeSmet]

Hmm. Interesting question. Personally I would use a separate part with sketches inside i.e. a skeleton part. As your first part in the assembly, and then construct or mate your other components to that.

Layout is just unusable. Maybe I'm doing something wrong! but I've had it completely blow up on me with even very simple models and there's no way of fixing it but to start over!

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[cinnamongirl]

What do you mean by skeleton part? Isn't that what a layout is? And by the way, I tried the layout method instead and it seems to give me just as much trouble as my original assembly that had only concentric mates.