Possible to change properties of a gear in the project?

[vwnerd]

Forgive me if this is not the correct place to ask this, but I'm wondering if it's possible to quickly change the properties of a gear (number of teeth and thickness, in particular) that has already been added to the project?  I know I can send the gear to the designer, change the properties there, then re-add it to the project, but I need to then remove the gear that I no longer want and manually re-link everything up.  I have a model I've put together, and deleting/adding/re-linking is a pretty cumbersome process for experimenting with tweaking various ratios in the model.  If there's an easier way that would sure help me a bunch.

Thanks in advance!

[ArtF]

Hi:

  Im afraid thats not possible in Gearotic. The only way it can be done is to delte the gear you wish to change,
and then add a new one and relink. This is because of the unlimited changes it can create on many systems,
centering changes and such usually invalidate everything forward of a linkage. Because of this complexity, I havent
as of yet anyway added any way to feed forward changes to the system from resizing a gears ratio..

  You can replace a pinion gear with a larger one for example , relink them into the proper chain, then do a "Move on gear" call
on the larger gear. It "may" fix up the remianing items as it will try to recenter and such, but meshing issues may
be evident in the simulation on the new gear. If its just a matter of distances, then performing a "move on gear"
with the new meshed gear may fix up centering issues as it rotates anything attached to the moving gear at
the same time. Thats about all one can try though in that area..

  If your using the shaft the gear your replacing is on, and theres a new center distance, then it isnt possible
to do anything, all forward gears would need to be deleted.

  If you just need a new ratio between two gears, then the best method is to remove both, calculate a new
module for two gears with the new ratio so they have the same center distances, then add them on
to the appropriate shafts, then delete the originals and relink.

  I will consider an option to just replace any two gears with a set center distance with any two others with
the same distance..and have the system retain the links..

Art

[vwnerd]

Hi:

  Im afraid thats not possible in Gearotic. The only way it can be done is to delte the gear you wish to change,
and then add a new one and relink. This is because of the unlimited changes it can create on many systems,
centering changes and such usually invalidate everything forward of a linkage. Because of this complexity, I havent
as of yet anyway added any way to feed forward changes to the system from resizing a gears ratio..

  You can replace a pinion gear with a larger one for example , relink them into the proper chain, then do a "Move on gear" call
on the larger gear. It "may" fix up the remianing items as it will try to recenter and such, but meshing issues may
be evident in the simulation on the new gear. If its just a matter of distances, then performing a "move on gear"
with the new meshed gear may fix up centering issues as it rotates anything attached to the moving gear at
the same time. Thats about all one can try though in that area..

  If your using the shaft the gear your replacing is on, and theres a new center distance, then it isnt possible
to do anything, all forward gears would need to be deleted.

   If you just need a new ratio between two gears, then the best method is to remove both, calculate a new
module for two gears with the new ratio so they have the same center distances, then add them on
to the appropriate shafts, then delete the originals and relink.

  I will consider an option to just replace any two gears with a set center distance with any two others with
the same distance..and have the system retain the links..

Art

That makes sense, thank you for the thoughtful reply.  I appreciate the complexity it would entail, even if you were willing to accept the downstream chaos it would cause in most cases.  I wonder about a separate mode in the application that would let you prove out ratios in complex trains in more of an abstract way, to avoid some of those headaches while still allowing some free experimentation.  In my case, I'm designing an orrery and it's perhaps an unusual case where the goal is to approximate ratios occurring in nature.  There is a broad spectrum of options for designing an approximation of the system, entirely depending upon the desired level of accuracy.  It's very time consuming (and error prone) designing this system on paper, and Gearotic has been a godsend in this regard.  I modeled one of the simplest options (perhaps second only in simplicity to the design using Ferguson's Paradox) I could come up with, and am now trying to find any "low hanging fruit" there might be in that model for improving the accuracy of some of the ratios... trying to find that balance between simplicity of design and ease of manufacture, versus acceptable accuracy.

I'm a software engineer by day, so I have some pretty deep appreciation for what you've been able to achieve with this product.  It's a wonderful tool and clearly a labor of love.

-Max