Mechanical Engineer Guide
The Mechanical Engineer Guide provides mechanical engineers with advanced technical information, as well as methods to improve performance and tuning.Mechanical Engineer Quick Start
The following shows the typical workflow for a mechanical engineer working with Vortex® Studio to import 3D models, create parts and constraints, and work with simulated mechanisms and objects.
A good way to start is to try out Creating a Mechanism tutorial, which takes you step-by-step through the process of building a simple mechanism.
Creating Mechanical Content
This section shows the typical workflow for a mechanical engineer working with Vortex® Studio to import 3D models, create parts and constraints, and work with simulated mechanisms and scenes.Mechanisms
Mechanisms play a very important role in Vortex® content, as they contain the link between the dynamics objects and the rest of the simulation.Assemblies
An assembly contains the basic objects for dynamic simulation: parts, constraints and graphics.Parts
Parts represent rigid bodies in a simulation and can be added to an Assembly.Collision Geometries
A part on its own does not have volume. Therefore, it cannot collide with other elements in a scene. For this reason, collision geometries must be added to allow rigid body interactions.Contact Materials
In Vortex®, the contact material defines the behavior when two materials collide.Collision Rules
By default, everything with collision geometry collides, but you can specify which pairs should not collide with each other by setting collision detection rules.Attachments
You can attach assemblies in mechanisms or mechanisms together in the scene by using attachments.Constraints
Constraints operate on one or more parts to restrict their relative range of motion.Remote Debugger User Guide
The Remote Debugger application lets you monitor and visualize a simulation from outside of the simulator's systems so that you can troubleshoot and diagnose problems in your content remotely.Cable Systems
The Cable Systems extensions allow you to use the Vortex Studio Editor to create a cable system definition in which a series of point definitions you specify and attach to existing parts make up its segment definitions.Earthwork Systems
Earthwork Systems is a Vortex developer module that is used to simulate earthmoving operations such as digging, trenching, filling, etc.Vehicle Systems
Vehicle Systems provides an easy way to define a complete and functional vehicle by using the Vortex Studio Editor.Hydraulics Systems
In Vortex® Studio Editor, you can now simulate various hydraulics components, such as an actuator, a pump, a divider, a combiner and a transmission using the Hydraulics Systems extensions.Technical Notes for Mechanical Engineers
This section collects more in-depth information about a variety of topics for the advanced user.Mechanical Engineer Best Practices
This section offers some common techniques to increase the performance of your simulations.Vortex Theory Guide Document
This document introduces the theory underlying Vortex Software’s multibody dynamics engine.
Verification and Validation Document
The performance and accuracy of Vortex Studio have been carefully tested by carrying out analyses of problems with known analytical solutions. To provide confidence in the accuracy of simulations using Vortex Studio, this document presents a subset of the analyses performed.