Computer-Aided Mechanism Design and Analysis
Using ChExcel

Documentation about the project

• Documentation of ChExcel
• Report on Mechanism Analysis Using ChExcel
• Paper on Mechanism Analysis Using ChExcel
• An Application Example

Analysis of Fourbar linkage mechanisms.

Web-based interface to various mechanism is available using which the respective mechanisms can be analysed. Web-based animation requires installation of Ch Mechanism Toolkit on the client computer.

To utilize the above feature the user should have an internet connection. To prevent the current dependency on internet and the user to perform the same offline ChExcel was used in demonstrating it. This can be done by using the worlds widely used spredsheet Microsoft Excel as the front end and Ch as back end for calculations.

The figure in right shows the fourbar linkage mechanism which is under study in this project. Representation of the variables in the program code literally corresponds to the figure. For example, theta_1 in program code corresponds to the angle between the link1 and ground which is represented by theta 1.

Download and Installation for the package

To implement the software package, you need to install Ch --- an embeddable C/C++ interpreter and its Mechanism Toolkit. Ch is freely available for downloading from here. The user has to install ChExcel as an Excel add-in whose procedure can be obtained from the ChExcel documentaion. It allows users to perform the analyses shown here on their own computer. The script files that can be downloaded from here are to be placed in the _path for the Excel to communicate with the files.