Rigid bodies and joints are created at the assembly level from solid body instances in assembly components and assembly constraints respectively.

The resultant functionality can be found on the Physics navigator tab.

Above you can find the Rigid Bodies, below the joints. When clicking on a joint, then above the two connected components are marked with red.

The Rigid Bodies' name is the Journal Identifier of its Component source.

There are 3 types of Joints and Constraints

Joint limits

For hinge and cylindrical joints, you can specify joint limits that define an acceptable range of motion for the joint.

In the context menu under Joints and Constraints you can find the context menu command Edit.

-> The respective dialog box with the dialog area Limits is opened.

Linear limits are based on translate mates. Angular limits are based on rotate mates.^{[13] [14]}

	Note
	Mate limits are implemented as Joint limits and are available starting with NX10.

Layer placement

Joints are stored on layer 33 by default.

See ifugnx.cfg

layer_12=joints:33:4

Key and key value have the following structure:

Layer_IND=element_name : layer_number:layer_status : category

Naming convention for joints

If a port name (PortName variable) is provided in the ifugnx.cfg, it is used also for the corresponding joint, otherwise the name is built from the connection point names of the connected parts.

Preconditions

To have the functionality available in the Mechatronics Concept Designer, under $CADENAS_SETUP/ifugnx.cfg, the key EnableMCD has to be set on 1 (default is 0).

Furthermore the respective NX license "mcd_core" has to be accessible.