Mechanism Dynamics Option (MDO) is a new addition to the established Mechanism Design Extension (MDX), and it greatly expands the Pro/ENGINEER mechanism design environment.

While MDX provides fundamental kinematic motion simulation with joints, linkages, and drivers; MDO simulates dynamic forces from springs, motors, gravity, damping, friction, impact, and inertial component masses. This allows engineers to simulate and improve the dynamic performance of a mechanism as it would operate in real life - accelerating and decelerating, staying up or falling down, or cams separating from one another.

MDO also offers three different mechanism analyses: static, dynamic, and force balance. Mechanism Dynamics presents the results from an analysis as an animation of the mechanism in action, with the various forces depicted as color-coded vector arrows; as well as graphing the reaction forces at a connection, point velocities, accelerations and positions. It can also export data for further analysis in other programs, such as Microsoft Excel.

In this course, students will learn how to impart dynamic forces to existing Mechanism designs to create real-life simulations. Students will then use static, dynamic, and force balance analyses, as well as graphs and vector arrows to investigate results using the Mechanism Dynamics Option. 