BEPUphysics

Hello guys.

(I'm sorry for my bad English)

Is it possible to somehow simulate a gearbox in BEPUphysics?
I know that I can change settings of a motor (reduce speed and increase torque proportionally) but I want to have a gearbox as a separate unit.
Is it possible?

Thank You
Pavel Melnikov

The answer should be 'yes,' though I'm unsure of the exact behaviors and goals you have in mind. The most likely implementation would involve creating a logical wrapper that simulates the behavior of a gearbox outside of the physics engine by tuning the motor settings on the fly.

Thank you for your fast reply Norbo.

I will try to explain what I have in mind.
I'm implementing a mobile robots simulator where a user can create a robot by combining predefined units together.
The units are:
- Motors
- Servos
- Gearboxes
- Wheels
- Electronic controllers
etc...
At the first phase of my development I plan to implement a Motor and a GearBox as a single unit. So a gearbox will be simulated by just tuning the motor settings. But in future I plan to have a gearbox and a motor as a separate units. It will make design of a robot more modular (each unit will carry out its own function).
A gearbox as a single unit can be usefull in many situations. For example, when there is no motor at all (ex: watermill where the wheel is driven by the force of the falling water or some another external force. this example is not related to robotics but It clearly describes what I mean) or when two or more gearboxes connected to the same motor (in this case the output shafts have proportinal angular velocities and I'm not shure that I will be able to implement the simulation of such combination using two motors precisely synchronized by tuning the motors' settings).

So my question is - Can I simulate a gearbox (that has an input shaft and an output shaft, output shaft has a velocity and torque proportional to the input shaft's velocity and torque at any time) that can work without a motor using the current classes in the BEPUphysics? Or the best way for me is to start thinking about writing a new element (integrated into the engine) that will carry out a gearbox function that I need?

By the way, BEPUphysics is awesome! Everything looks very simple, straightforward and performs very well. I used JigLibX (ported to C# from JigLib) before and it's a terrible library: no documentation, constraints allways fail, there is only a hinge joint and there are no other joints, etc.., etc....

Thank You
Pavel Melnikov

an I simulate a gearbox (that has an input shaft and an output shaft, output shaft has a velocity and torque proportional to the input shaft's velocity and torque at any time) that can work without a motor using the current classes in the BEPUphysics?

It sounds like what you're looking for is a UniversalJoint, which is one of the built in constraint types. It's composed of a BallSocketJoint and TwistJoint. A picture can be found in the documentation (section 5.F): http://bepuphysics.codeplex.com/wikipag ... umentation

The non-motorized Joints offer various restrictions on the degrees of freedom of a system, which can be used for other kinds of 'gearboxes' as well. It just depends on what degrees of freedom are being transferred.

The advice about gearboxes that I provided earlier related more to a vehicle's gearbox, since I thought you were talking about something like switching gears for extra torque and such

By the way, BEPUphysics is awesome! Everything looks very simple, straightforward and performs very well.

Thanks!