Help picking which rigid body library to use

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willw
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 2:22 pm

Help picking which rigid body library to use

Post by willw »

Hello,

I am investigating different rigid body dynamics simulators to find the best fit for my problem. It looks like a number of them should be able to do it but I thought I'd ask here.

I am wanting to simulate a rectangular mass suspended from each corner by a cable to fixed points. What I want to do is be able to change the length of the cables (enabling pitch and tilt of the rectangular object) and find out how the centre of mass of the object moves as each of the four cables support a different fraction of the weight of the object.

It looks like I can set up this kind of system using bullet, ODE or Newton Game Dynamics with suitable joints and a slider to allow for change in cable lengths. I could then run the simulation long enough until the system is stationery and see what position the centre of mass of the object is at.

Does anyone have any recommendations on doing this? Am I even correct to be looking at these libraries to solve this problem? Can anyone recommend a particular library for this (ideally with an example that was vaguely similar to this).

Thanks
Will
KenB
Posts: 49
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:40 am

Re: Help picking which rigid body library to use

Post by KenB »

AGX Multiphysics has the functionality you need. In particular, if your system is stiff (e.g. high tension in the wires and/or large mass ratios), then I doubt that the game engines will be of much use. They can deal with ratios of perhaps 1:50 while AGX can handle 1:1e9 in such cases, with retained physical parameters for e.g. elasticity. See: http://www.algoryx.se/
Also see some of the research background: http://www.physics.umu.se/english/resea ... imulation/

/Kenneth
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