Creating Kinematic Links Between Actors

Kinematic commands let you manage the assembly tree structure and animate assemblies using kinematic constraints. You can apply kinematic links to parts and assemblies.

See Also
Using Align Pivots
Transform Tab

  1. Click Transform > Link Child to Parent to create child-parent relationships between the actors. You can also achieve this by dragging actors into assemblies in the Assembly tree.

    Note: A child can have only one parent but a parent can have multiple children.

  2. Click Transform > Pivot Transform Mode and pivot alignment tools to align each child-parent group's pivots.

    Note: For kinematic motions to work, a child's pivot must be in the same alignment as its parent's pivot, and all pivots in a chain of child-parent relationships must be aligned in the same direction. The child pivot location determines where the link is applied and the parent pivot location determines the link orientation and movement. For example, all pivots could have the Z direction pointing up or down. Use Align Pivots to copy pivot alignment between specified actors.

  3. In the Properties pane for a selected child or parent, assign the appropriate Link type (such as Free or Linear) and the axis.

    Select Show/Hide Degrees of Freedom to see the direction of motion.

  4. Optionally, select Limited joints and specify motion limits.

  5. Select Kinematic Free Dragging and drag the actors to visualize their motions.