Four🍀bar

Web demo: https://kmolyuan.github.io/four-bar-rs/

Four🍀bar is a simulator and a synthesis tool for four-bar linkage mechanism.

CLI/GUI program is four-bar-ui crate, but the executable is called four-bar.
Kernel library four-bar is on https://crates.io/crates/four-bar.
Cite this work here.

GUI powered by https://github.com/emilk/egui.

Release

Download: https://github.com/KmolYuan/four-bar-rs/releases/latest

Native GUI is the default startup behavior, use --help option to see more commands.

# Equivalent to double-clicking the executable
four-bar
# Equivalent to opening by the app or file dragging
four-bar FILE_PATH1 FILE_PATH2

Some platforms require additional dependencies as listed below. If your platform have no pre-compiled binary, you need to build from source.

Windows

The executable requires support for Visual C++. You can refer to the Visual C++ support documentation for installation instructions.

Linux

libxcb and libgtk-3 are required to run the application on Linux, and most desktop environments come with these packages pre-installed.

NetBSD

On NetBSD a pre-compiled binary is available from the official repositories, to install it simply run:

pkgin install four-bar-rs

Build from Source

In Linux, you need to install some library for GUI.

This is an example for apt, please see https://github.com/emilk/egui#demo.

sudo apt install libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxkbcommon-dev libgtk-3-dev

Then run with cargo directly:

cargo build --release
cargo run --release -- --help

WebAssembly

Run those scripts from the repository:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
cargo install trunk
cd four-bar-ui
# Serve in localhost
trunk serve
# Compile WASM
trunk build --release

The application package will be deployed in the dist directory.

File Format

Four🍀bar uses a custom file format to store the linkage data. The file is a plain text file of RON syntax.

Synthesis Target Format

The target coupler curve can be input from:

CSV .csv file
RON .ron file as a linkage to generate a coupler curve

The file name should be name.mode.ext pattern, where

name is the name of the case, can be any string
mode is the mode of the target curve, can be closed, open, and partial
ext is the file extension, can be csv or ron

For example, example.closed.csv is a target closed curve in CSV format.

Figure Configuration

The figure configuration is a RON file with the extension .fig.ron. Four🍀bar GUI can import figure configurations to generate linkage plots, and the syn command will redraw the linkage result without cleaning if the figure configuration exists.

Citations

Chang, Y., Chang, JL., Lee, JJ. (2024). Atlas-Based Path Synthesis of Planar Four-Bar Linkages Using Elliptical Fourier Descriptors. In: Okada, M. (eds) Advances in Mechanism and Machine Science. IFToMM WC 2023. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 149. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45709-8_20