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@David_YL_Nguyen @S1mon @Derek_Van_Allen_BD

Hi everybody,

thank you all for your replies and sorry for staying submerged for a few days after my posting: It's the work.

Creating curves for select points was my first approach, too. It is good enough for visualisations and presentations. I went for the volumetric approach because that would allow to put a "forbidden" volume into the design, add a safety offset to it and then check the intersection with all other parts that may be come into existance in the area. Ideally the volume would be associative and adapt whenever changes are made to the moving subassembly.

So, I took a look at Neil's FS and found it a bit hard to figure out what is going on and what the preconditions are. I would have expected some variables for the linkage movements and limits. Then, there is a single line that is made into a composite part, maybe just to make it 'stiff'. Anyway, the feature appears to move the parts according to the mates assigned, in increments, each time copying everything in place and later apply a boolean to all copies created. While that kind of works, it leaves gaps.

I believe I'll get closer to the goal by using a combination of the Curve Generator approach at key points and then create surfaces on these curves that envelop a volume.

@eric_pesty, I'll clarify: I meant that I didn't understand the options in the planar constraint dialog (tragically misinterpreted the axes) and so put together a tedious but effective workaround to compensate for my lack of understanding. D'OH! Thanks for the jolt of reality! Much appreciated.