Hello, I am running a design study that is linked to a simulation. This design study is intended to evaluate a mechanism over a range of positions. The end result desired from this study are a list of forces and moments about a specific frame of reference specified by a coordinate system.

I created the simulation and I can get the forces and moments I desire by using the "List Result Force" feature and selecting the frame of reference and vertex for the moment calculations as shown below.

This is all well and good, but I need to do this for a large number of mechanism positions, so I looked into doing a design study so I can do this automatically. This is when my problems start.

I tried setting up a sensor based on the simulation data and couldn't find a sensor type that would give me the moments I need. I could only find a sensor that would give me the free body forces. OK, so then I tried just getting the sensor to give me the forces about the coordinate system I desired. Still no luck! It seems that whatever I do, I cannot get the sensor to give me the forces about a coordinate system.

So, what I ended up doing is scaling back my range of data points and running each simulation manually. Then I wrote down the force and moment values for each simulation. This is not ideal, because it takes time and I had to scale back the number of data points.

My questions are the following:

Is there a way I can get force and moments about a specifed frame of refernce (or force and the location of the center of force) automatically in a design study?

Am I doing something wrong with the sensor configuration in trying to get it to give a specific force about a specified coordinate system? Why it no work?

Should I be looking at another FEA package?

Thanks for your time!

-Paul