RAPID SEARCH AND SELECTION OF PATH GENERATING MECHANISMS FROM A LIBRARY

Using an harmonic analysis, the coupler curve of any mechanism may be stored as a series of coefficients independent of mechanism type. A process of normalization can be applied to the coefficients. By storing the normalized coefficients and associated dimensions of a large number of dimensional variants for one particular mechanism type, a catalogue can be created. Catalogues for a wide variety of different mechanism types are combined together in a library. A method whereby this library can be created and searched to find the best ''seed'' mechanisms for subsequent optimization as a path generator is discussed.