The special terms used in this guide are summarized in the Glossary.
Essential Steps to Build a Model
You use the same basic procedure for building a SimMechanics model regardless of its complexity. The steps are similar to those for building a regular Simulink® model. More complex models add steps without changing these basics.
Select Ground, Body, and Joint blocks. From the Bodies and Joints libraries, drag and drop the Body and Joint blocks needed to represent your machine, including a Machine Environment block and at least one Ground block, into a Simulink model window.
The Machine Environment block represents your machine's mechanical settings.
Ground blocks represent immobile ground points at rest in absolute (inertial) space.
Body blocks represent rigid bodies.
Joint blocks represent relative motions between the Body blocks to which they are connected.