Kinematics Tutorial: Finding Linkage Cognates with SolidWorks

Lately, I have been thoroughly enjoying learning about linkages, their motion, and their synthesis.  Anyone who has tried to find the cognates of a four-bar linkage may have noticed that the process is time-consuming and a bit tedious.

SolidWorks to the rescue!

SolidWorks makes it easy to build the Cayley diagram of a linkage, and subsequently move this diagram to find the cognates.  In theory, movement of links 2 and 4 to their designated positions will cause the cognates of the linkage to appear, and luckily, in this case, theory becomes reality. The different cognates are color coded:

Roberts Cayley Diagram
  Roberts Cognates

This certainly makes life easier.  Thanks for viewing!

 

Dave Knight

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Mechanical Engineering, 2013

Download Roberts Linkage

 

Dave Knight

Latest posts by Dave Knight (see all)