Bond Zone

If you want to simulate the stacking and unstacking stages of a material handling process during a simulation, use the Bond Zone command. You can use a bond zone to combine rigid and collision bodies to improve simulation stability and calculation speeds.

For example, you can create a bond zone on a conveyor system to combine parts in a specific area.

You can choose whether the center mass of a bond zone updates when a bond zone updates using the Update Mass Center option.

In a material-handling workflow, you can bond instances from an object source to other instances or rigid bodies, then use an object sink to remove the bonded assembly.

Creating a bond zone

To create a bond zone, you must:

1. Define the bond zone in the coordinate system.
2. Select the rigid bodies you want to bond.
3. Set the collision category to filter which rigid and collision bodies are detected in the bond zone.
4. Select whether to automatically combine the detected bodies, or create a user-defined trigger using operations set to Collision.

For example, you can use a bond zone to bond a carousel and a product when they collide.

Runtime parameters

• adding — Moves a rigid body from one bond zone to another when a bond zone triggers and the action mode is set to Collision. For example, you can transfer a bonded part from one carousel to another carousel using a bond zone by moving the part into the bond zone, activating the runtime parameter, and then moving it through the simulation.
• update — Executes a bonding or separation process, according to the body within the bond zone and whether the action mode is set to User Defined. To detach bodies, you can use an operation to trigger the update runtime parameter with all or some of the bonded bodies outside the bond zone. The bodies within the zone remain bonded, but the bodies outside of the zone are detached.

Use as a simple fixed joint

You can also use the Bond Zone command to more easily create basic fixed joints by creating a bond zone to attach multiple objects during a simulation, rather than defining individual joints.