UCLA

This dissertation lays the foundation for the FACT Design Add-in for SolidWorks. A software design tool that guides users to create compliant mechanisms with no prior knowledge of the theory. This tool implements the rules of the freedom and constraint topology (FACT) design approach and automates the steps that are rooted in screw theory so that only kinematically valid designs can be created. This automation, however, has required theoretical expansions to the FACT design theory. Namely, the autonomous identification of freedom spaces and visually based methods to analyze and synthesize interconnected hybrid mechanisms. The identification of freedom spaces from any set of twists is a core task of the add-in. This method is facilitated by the principal geometry, a proposed set of twists for each freedom space, that show all valid options of its origin and orientation. However, the main contribution of this work is the visual analysis and synthesis of interconnected hybrid mechanisms. These are the most generic type of mechanism where the joints are not purely parallel nor serial to one another. The analysis method is the visual implementation of prior numeric methods and introduces a comprehensive transmission and load path theory to the FACT design approach. The analysis method is then converted into a synthesis approach. This is the first general synthesis method for interconnected hybrid mechanisms and completes the field of visual mechanism synthesis. This dissertation also presents a one degree-of-freedom (DOF) transmission mechanism. This is a large-range-of-motion compliant mechanism that uses a central screw DOF of a joint to convert a rotational input to a collinear translational output and vice versa. This mechanism serves as a powerful example of what can be created with the FACT Design Add-in; facilitating such creations is the motivation behind this work.