collision in Wildfire..

Something doesn't sound right. The first component is rigid, the second assembled component moves. It is 'connected' to the first component so that one or more degrees of freedom out of the six available (three planar, three axial) allow it to move. The connection defintion can include geometric limits of movement, defined as the distance between two planes or points or other things like parallelism. Is this how you've set up your connections?

Assuming it is, your next step is to mechanize the moveable assembly by going to 'Applications>Mechanism'. A whole new set of icons should appear on right. The first one I like to use, to test out my connections, is the the 'hand' icon which takes you to dynamic drag. Click on the moveable component, move the mouse around and the component should follow.

Then, set up drivers (motors, either servo or force, attached to connection axes) to define *how* the part moves. When this is done, create a new analysis, using the servos you've defined, running for a certain length of time, capturing a certain number of frames per second. When you run this analysis, pick either 'Quick check' or 'Global interference' to see the results of the interference study, highlighted in red where the parts interfere.

If this seems complicated, it's not an illusion. PTC has authored a course on it, one which is available at any school or university with an educational license for Pro/e. I'm advising you, if you are serious about learning this, to be serious enough to take the course. Oh, yeah, BTW, this is not some fluff like SolidWorks "collisions". Mechanisms is actully Mechanica Motion Jr., the setup for doing stress analysis on moving components.

David Janes

David Janes

Last I knew PTC had not developed anything beyond point contact... at least on the Mechanica side. They did have the ability to allow you to calculate a "real" amount of bounce based on the hardnesses of the two materials (which is unique I think) but the guts to what to put in for values was in some tiny little tech note that later hotline folks would only say... "That should never have got published" because PTC can't be responsible for it's use and it goes to far into material properties. Ah pbbbttt... (The PTC salute!)

I think if you are trying to create planar to planar contact that you might need to "seed" the area with spheres to get them moved over to point contacts. Of course, I could be completely wrong, and I completely agree with David's assessment of complexity. Someday I will dig back into this... might take years.

-meld

PS: You meant MDX right? Never heard of MBX