Cables - maximum winding angle

Normally a cable running over a circle stays connected to that circle at any cost. This behavior causes a jump in geometry when the winding jumps from 0 to 360 or back:

Like any jump, this can be an issue for the solver. Especially when the solution is close to the jump.

The work-around is to define a “maximum winding angle” defining how much the cable is allowed to wrap around the circle. If this amount is exceeded then the geometry is adjusted to something that is physically invalid but removed the discontinuity at 0-360. Instead the discontinuity is now at the defined “maximum winding angle”:

Defining the maximum winding angle such that it is far away from the desired solution can solve convergence problems.

Note: The cable does not disconnect from the circle as that would introduce yet another artifact. Disconnecting would allow the circle and cable to move away from each-other in the direction of the axis of the circle (perpendicular to the animations above).

If that is what you want then use a roundbar by setting the circles is roundbar property to True. See roundbars

GUI

API

The maximum winding angle is defined for all connections but is only used where applicable (on intermediate circles).

The “no maximum” value is 999. By default all maximum winding angles are set to 999.