How to give motion/movement to Catia model ‘outside’ the program.

[Braveslice]

Hi all,

How to give motion/movement to Catia model ‘outside’ the program.

I have a model of excavator in Catia, what I would like to do is to give set points to the joints easily.

1. The most beautiful scenario is that I can use Matlab to give paths to the moving joints.
2. Secondly, most Hollywoodis would be that there is a way to use joystick to move my excavator.

Is it possible? If not, do you have an idea how to deliver?

Yours,
BL

 

[douger]

You do have an option within the software to create designed motion with the Kinematics Tools. But, if you would like to move models to some external software you would need to use some method of data exchange to export to another type of animation software.

I am assuming you are wanting to create some type of training software using the CAD model as the basis for feedback of the controls input (let me know if I am way off base here). To do this you would need to find a relavent piece of software to your needs then find some method to migrate your design data to that software. From there you would need to create the necessary backbones for creating the movements (creating a skeleton, binding the models to the skeleton, programming the inputs to manipulate the model, etc) this is about the extent of my knowledge in this area but there is a significant amount of work that would be necessary to accomplish this in my honest opinion.

 

[Braveslice]

Hi douger,

Thank you for you reply. Your view about the purpose is correct. I was afraid that there is no easy way to make it happen as there was not information about the subject easily to be found online.

I have a hunch that Kinematics Tools combined with simple macro could do the trick?

Ala there is a text file written by some other program ie. Matlab then in Catia macro would read the correct set points. How does it sound?

 

[douger]

You know this is a very interesting thought. I am not sure if CATIA would allow you to generate a dynamic update to the models (mechanism driver positions, components positions, etc) from input from some type of peripheral device. A very interesting line of thought though.

I am pretty sure you could ultimatly interface with the input device through VBA provided the programming know-how is there. Definitly a bit out of my realm as far as CATIA Programming is concerned though. This may end up passing into the realm of the CAA C++ Development Tools depending on the complexity.

 

[jkralowell]

Hi all,

How to give motion/movement to Catia model ‘outside’ the program.

I have a model of excavator in Catia, what I would like to do is to give set points to the joints easily.

1. The most beautiful scenario is that I can use Matlab to give paths to the moving joints.
2. Secondly, most Hollywoodis would be that there is a way to use joystick to move my excavator.

Is it possible? If not, do you have an idea how to deliver?

Yours,
BL

As for point 1., LMS Virtual.Lab Motion is a V5-native product which can do this. You put a s-Function in Simulink to communicate states between MATLAB and Virtual.Lab Motion. Whatever logic is in Simulink then becomes fully coupled to your 3d dynamic excavator model in CATIA; as both program's output files are generated by a single numerical integrator (more stable than a co-simulation approach).

If you are willing to consider MS Excel as a suitable "outside" program, AND if you only want to snap your CATIA assembly into a new position (and you don't care to see how it actually gets there), then I recommend using standard CATIA design table configurations...no VBA required.

As for point 2., the only program that I am aware of that can do this is DADS. DADS has this kung-fu thing called "interactive analysis", which allows you to drive a joint displacement using your mouse. It's very cool actually, but is definitely not CATIA-based software. For an excavator application, I'm not sure how useful it would be since I'm pretty sure you could only drive one actuator at a time, whereas most excavators require multiple actuators acting synchronously.