Menu

Biomechanical Editor

The Biomechanics Editor Window is where you design your biomechanical organism using the various body parts that AnimatLab provides. Each organism starts with a root body part (examples are a box, cone, cylinder, sphere, or mesh) and can have other body parts connected through the various joint constraints that AnimatLab provides. The body parts and joint connections form a tree structure which can be viewed in the hierarchy panel. This hierarchy allows you to see a textual breakdown of your biomechanical organism. The Biomechanical Editor also allows you to manipulate the various properties of your organism and body parts of your organism through the properties panel. You can also specify the material type properties that will be used for the parts in the simulation using the Material Types Editor.

The window has 5 major areas: 3D Display, Hierarchy, Properties, and Receptive Fields. You can click on the various parts of the image to be taken to a more detailed description of that area.

The biomechanical editor window.


Editor Parts
Figure 3. Properties Toolbar.
This toolbar displays the properties of any selected body parts or joints. This allows you to view and modify the properties of the selected object. The properties are split into functional groups like 'Graphical Properties', 'Part properties' and so on. However, you can view an alphabetical list of the objects properties by clicking the AZ button that is just above the properties window.
Figure 4. Hierarchy Toolbar.
This toolbar provides a tree view outline of the body parts of this organism and how all the parts are connected together. Clicking on any node selects that part and displays its properties in the property toolbar. 

Figure 5. Receptive Fields Toolbar.
This toolbar allows you to configure the touch receptive fields for the currently selected part. This is a touch sensory system where you can define points along the surface of your object that act as the center of a receptive field. Contacts on the surface are transduced into current in neurons depending on how close they are to the center and how much force is applied. Click here for more details.
This window shows the body of the organism in 3-D. You can manipulate the parts of the body using the mouse or the properties dialog. Click here for more details.