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Use of Animation to Stimulate Students’ Interests in Mechanism Design

Daniel M. Chen

Central Michigan University

I. Introduction

Mechanism design is one of the most important applications in an integrated computer-aided engineering (CAE) software. Few products designed today do not have moving parts. Mechanism design in CAE allows the designer to put the solid parts of a machine into motion without actually building one. In addition, the parameters such as interference, limits of motion, and geometric properties that include displacement, velocity, and acceleration can be easily obtained. With such a powerful tool, students can enhance their problem solving skills and understand the concepts of mechanism design better along the way.

The course of Advanced Computer-Aided Design offered at Central Michigan University employs such a design tool called SDRC/I-DEAS. Although this software is sophisticated in terms of capabilities, it is not difficult to learn due to its visual feedback at every step. This is crucial for students in engineering technology who learn best when they can see things and work with them. The capability of animation provided by the software stimulates great interests from students. This article discusses how the animation is used to help students understand some of the more challenging concepts in mechanism design. The focuses of this investigation are on: (1) how the problems are designed to stimulate students’ interests with the use of animation, and (2) how the learning process is enhanced in mechanism design as a result.

II. Animation of A Mechanism in I-DEAS

This section discusses how the animation of a mechanism (or mechanisms) is achieved in I- DEAS. The following represents the procedure students must follow in order to solve and animate the mechanism [1,3]. The solid-based parts are first created and used to define the assemblies and sub-assemblies. The assembly hierarchy is displayed in a form that lets students build the assembly according to the relationship among parts [2]. The title of the mechanism serves as the parent for the hierarchy tree. The part names are added to this tree to define the assembly. Sub-assemblies, which consist of groups of parts, can also be added to the tree if necessary. Then, students apply joints/constraints and grounds to the system and define motion input to one or more joints.

The above is the preparation required before the internal solver of I-DEAS can be used to solve the mechanism. In the internal solver window, students need only to enter the end time and number of steps in that same period of time. The results generated by the internal solver include

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ã 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Chen, D. (2002, June), Use Of Animation To Stimulate Students' Interests In Mechanism Design Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10862