I am looking for a basic 2D motion program, preferably not too expensive. I have no experience with this type of program, the one I need would be very basic.

I am designing a mechanism that has a stationary base and several moving parts generally shaped like long thin rectangles. The closest thing I could call it is an elaborate scissors hinge type mechanism, but it is not a really a hinge. I need to be able to pin these movable rectangles on the stationary base rectangle with a pin point that would function as a rotation center. These rotating rectangles may also have other rectangles pinned to them at other rotation points. I would then want to be able to grab one of the movable rectangles at some point and move it to see what effect this had on the attached pieces.

I don't need any information about forces or stress, I am only interested in motion paths and clearances. It would only need to be an imaginary 2D type situation. That is, although in reality some of these rectangle could be stacked on each other, they would appear to operate in a single plane and pass through one another. I started engineering in the paper and pencil days and can draw very well, I just can't complete this design until I see what the movement does. I have tried making cardboard models but they get too wonky and are inaccurate.

thanks very much for any suggestions,
fred42

 

I gave some more information about what I was looking for and received some feedback here: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/91296

Someone said SolidWorks would have trouble simulating the motion of a lever on a pin if the pin hole was greatly elongated to change the time of movement.

 

Try Solidedge 2D

You can download and install 2D Solidedge for free. It will work like AutoCAD with the exception that it also has the ability to constrain your sketches as would be the case with most 3D packages when sketching in "modelling mode". These constraints allow you to lock lines to the vertical or any angle, and restrain line end points to other lines so the end point can slide up and down the guide line that is drawn. Just two of many examples. If you put the dimensions into "driving" mode, the dimension values you enter drive the sketch so you don't have to draw to scale - just sketch and use the dims to pull everything into shape. You can use Solidege 3D for free for a month as a demo if you want to convert your designs into a 3D environment rather than just using sketches.

There are other 2d packages out there for free but this is the only one I know of that works parametrically - all the others I have tried are just a dumb drawing package as per AutoCAD and wont do what you want easily.

 

I have used this program with great success; it is often on sale for a lower price. It is simple to use, does not need a CAD program. It has some more advanced features like the Spreadsheet interface DDE, that you can learn to use for exchanging data with an Excel file.

Besides geometry, this program can calculate forces and other parameters once you get your model set up.

It includes some tolerancing functions like Monte Carlo simulations as well.

http://www.graficalc.com/