Discover Mechatronics-Based Motion System Design with NI LabVIEW and SolidWorks

Publish Date: Feb 15, 2012

Overview

Intense global competition is putting pressure on machine builders to deliver machines with higher throughput, reduced operating
cost, and more features. But it is not only about improving productivity. Rising energy costs and increasing environmental
awareness are causing engineers to focus on designs that increase efficiency and lower energy consumption. Therefore, todays
machine builders have switched from designing single-purpose machines to creating flexible and highly effective multipurpose
machines by adopting modern control systems and sophisticated algorithms and integrating high-end electronics into their
mechanical machines.
Table of Contents

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Introduction
Applying Virtual Prototyping to Facilitate a Mechatronics Design Approach
Connecting NI LabVIEW to SolidWorks
Best-In-Class Machine Designers Use Virtual Prototyping Tools
Additional Resources

1. Introduction

The trend toward effective multipurpose machines dramatically increases design complexity and forces different design groups to
work together more closely. In the design of a modern machine, every decision has a ripple effect throughout the design. If the
mechanical team decides to change the material and, therefore, the weight of a mechanical component, this change has an
impact on the motor sizing or sometimes even on the type of motor needed to efficiently operate the machine. Improving team
communication and collaboration between mechanical, electrical, and control engineers is crucial, and tools that offer seamless
integration and help them share data and information throughout all phases of the development cycle enable effective
collaboration.
2. Applying Virtual Prototyping to Facilitate a Mechatronics Design Approach

Mechatronics represents an industry-wide effort to improve the design process of modern machines by integrating the best
available development practices and technologies to streamline design, prototyping, and deployment. The mechatronics
engineering discipline is the synergistic combination of mechanical engineering, electronics, control engineering, and computers,
all integrated through the design process. One technology used in the mechatronics approach is virtual prototyping, also known as
digital prototyping. With this technology designers, engineers, manufacturing, and sales and marketing teams virtually explore a
complete product before it is built. You can use virtual prototyping to design, optimize, validate, and visualize your products and
evaluate different design concepts before incurring the cost of physical prototypes.
Virtual prototyping extends far beyond creating 3D CAD models. It gives you a way to assess the operation of moving parts,
determine whether the product will fail, and see how the various product components interact with subsystems. By digitally
simulating and validating the real-world performance of a product design, you can significantly reduce the number of physical
prototypes.
You also can use virtual prototyping to develop highly efficient systems in which motor and actuator size are perfectly matched
with the requirements of the mechanical structure. While most motor vendors offer tools for choosing a motor that fits a specific
need, the information those tools require is difficult to determine. The mathematical formulas describing a dynamic system are
anything but easy. In the past, engineers often chose motors based on limited information and over-engineered the motors by
adding security margins. With virtual prototyping tools, you can simulate the dynamic behavior of the whole system, including the
motors and the control algorithms, in advance and collect all the necessary information to select the right motors. In addition, you
can reuse most of the parameters required to perform the simulation from other development steps and merge them from different
design tools.
3. Connecting NI LabVIEW to SolidWorks

By combining SolidWorks motion analysis capabilities with the National Instruments LabVIEW 2009 NI SoftMotion Module and
using the motion control programming functions to drive the simulation within SolidWorks, you can create realistic simulations of
motion control systems.
To connect those two design tools, you can use the NI LabVIEW project to add an existing SolidWorks 3D CAD model to the
project tree. This automatically populates the motors and sensors defined within the model. By right-clicking the My Computer
item in the LabVIEW Project Explorer windowand selecting NewSolidWorks Model, you can easily connect to your models.
LabVIEW then pulls all the information from the model and shows available motors and sensors.
To simulate using the SolidWorks motors included in the model, you need to associate the motors with NI SoftMotion axes. These
axes are used when creating motion profiles with the NI SoftMotion function blocks. Right-click the My Computer item and select
NewNI SoftMotion Axis from the shortcut menu to open the Axis Manager dialog box and add an axis for each available
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NewNI SoftMotion Axis from the shortcut menu to open the Axis Manager dialog box and add an axis for each available
SolidWorks motor in the simulation.

Figure 1. LabVIEW Project with SolidWorks Model, Configured Motion Axes, and a Coordinate Space
In addition, you can group NI SoftMotion axes into coordinate spaces to perform coordinated moves using multiple axes
simultaneously. Use the coordinate spaces as inputs to your motion applications when performing coordinate moves. To create a
coordinate space, right-click on the My Computer item and select NewNI SoftMotion Coordinate Space to add a coordinate
space. In the dialog box that appears, you can select the axes you want to include within the coordinate space.
Assume that each axis associated with a SolidWorks motor is a servo motor. Because the axes are not associated with actual
hardware, you need to perform only minimal configuration to get started. To configure an axis, open the Axis Configuration
dialog box by right-clicking the axis you want to configure and selecting Properties. The Axis Configuration dialog box provides
a graphical configuration interface for axis settings.

Figure 2. LabVIEW NI SoftMotion provides a graphical configuration dialog for the axes and coordinate spaces.
After finalizing your configuration, you can use the high-level motion functions in the LabVIEW NI SoftMotion Module to develop
your move profiles ranging from single-axis to complex coordinated motion. Find the NI SoftMotion function blocks on the NI
SoftMotionFunction Blocks palette. Using the NI SoftMotion function blocks, you can perform straight-line moves, arc moves,
contoured moves, gearing, and camming operations as well as read status and data information.

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Figure 3. LabVIEW VI Using LabVIEW NI SoftMotion Function Blocks to Perform an Arc Move on the Selected Coordinate Space
Review the shipping examples that install with NI SoftMotion, which you can find by selecting HelpFind Examples. The
examples located at Toolkits and ModulesMotion ControlNI SoftMotionMechatronics provide not only LabVIEW example
VIs for typical motion profiles but are also associated with SolidWorks models that are simulation ready.
Before you run the application, you need to deploy the project to apply the settings of your axes and coordinate spaces to the
simulation. Select the My Computer, SolidWorks assembly, axes, coordinate, and VI items in the Project Explorer window,
right-click, and select Deploy from the shortcut menu. LabVIEW deploys the VI and all associated I/O resources and settings the
VI uses and switches the NI Scan Engine to Active mode. The NI Scan Engine is used under the hood for trajectory generation
and communication with SolidWorks.
To make sure that the NI Scan Engine is running or to update settings within the SolidWorks environment later on, you can also
manually switch from Configuration mode to Active mode or vice versa by selecting UtilitiesScan Engine ModeSwitch to
Active and UtilitiesScan Engine ModeSwitch to Configuration.
You start the simulation by running the LabVIEW VI. LabVIEW generates real-world motion trajectories based on your motion
profile, and SolidWorks performs the simulation. While the simulation is running, the 3D CAD model performs the motion. During
run time, you cannot conduct real-time visualization because of the intense nature of the simulation calculations on the SolidWorks
side. The simulation is correct with respect to simulation time, but it appears to move slower than actual hardware during
calculations. You can play back the simulation in SolidWorks to view the calculated simulation in real-time speed and verify the
speed of the assembly in reality. In addition, you can use the SolidWorks features to visualize and analyze your application or
send data back to LabVIEW for further analysis.
With virtual prototyping tools, you can create a realistic simulation of the machine for a variety of design analysis purposes
including the following:

Visualize realistic machine operation

Estimate machine cycle time performance

Perform accurate force/torque requirements analysis

Design and validate motion control programming and detect collisions

Optimize the design before building a physical prototype

Identify design issues across mechanical/electrical boundaries

By using SolidWorks and LabVIEW, you can simulate mechanical dynamics, including mass and friction effects, cycle times, and
individual component performance, before specifying a single physical part. Integrating motion simulation with CAD simplifies the
design because the simulation uses information that already exists in the CAD model, such as assembly mates, couplings, and
material mass properties.
Finally, you can easily deploy the motion application you developed and validated using the 3D CAD model to embedded motion
control platforms such as NI CompactRIO hardware. Using the new NI 951x C Series drive interface modules, you can easily
apply the algorithms to a physical prototype or the final machine through the direct connectivity from C Series modules to
hundreds of stepper and servo drives and motors. Because of this, you can reuse the code developed and tested within the
simulation and connect it to physical I/O and motors.
4. Best-In-Class Machine Designers Use Virtual Prototyping Tools

An independent study by the Aberdeen Group shows that by using a mechatronics approach and virtual prototyping tools,
best-in-class machine design companies exchange more iterations on simulation for fewer physical prototypes and test cycles and
reduce development time by 12 to 40 days. Through simulation, those companies collect large amounts of information in early
design phases, which helps them improve their designs, identify risks, and optimize the efficiency of their final machines.

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5. Additional Resources

What is LabVIEW for Measuring and Controlling Industrial Systems

Getting Started with NI SoftMotion for SolidWorks
Purchase the LabVIEW 2009 NI SoftMotion Module

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