I am attaching a short tutorial/discussion on the use of scripting to assist in the design and manufacture of a mechanical iris. I was attracted to this project when I started considering the use of an mechanical iris to vary the light output from a table lamp (instead of an electronic solution).
Having found a design online, I began by asking the questions: Does it work? Is the drawing accurate? The Geometry is quite complex, so I turned to writing a CamBam script to answer these question. The results are included in the attachments: A description of the task, the resulting script and a CamBam model to test it out.
The script simulates the behaviour of the iris as it opens/closes, and also formally checks for conflicts between the moving parts to allow for any necessary changes to the geometry to be made.
Any feed back or comments are most welcome.
Geoff
