Hi,

I have designed a hinged hopper mechanism, which I wish to test under gravity to discover if the lever mechanism is ballanced.

The hopper when open looks like this:-

And when it is closed, it looks like this:-

The front of the hopper has a handle on it. And when the hopper is operated by a human being, it is important that the mechanism is ballanced when opening and closing the hopper.

Therefore, I thought I should use SolidWorks simulation to discover if the mechanism is ballanced under gravity. i.e. that there is equal force when opening and closing.

My idea was to set up a Motion Study, and just put the hopper assembly in an open state and then test it to see if it closed under gravity. If it does then I would adjust the mechanism until it was ballanced under equalibrium.

Also I would run the simulation when the hopper is closed, and see it it opens. Again, if it did then I would need to add more weight to the counterballance, and test again until it is under equalibrium. I might also test the hopper mechanism under simulation when it is half open also.

So to do this I:

1. Opened the hopper assembly

2. Checked that all mates worked correctly for the working lever mechanism

3. Made the main chassis fixed

4. Went into the Motion Study toolbar

5. Clicked on the 'apple' to set up standard gravity.

6. Pressed the ' calculate button'

However, the computer returned the following error:-

Can anybody help me to solve this seemingly simple simulation?

I have placed the Assembly and Parts for the simulation on Dropbox here https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zu4q17oc0pj749/HOPPER%20SIMULATION.zip if anybody wants to try it on thier system

Kind regards,

John