Some commercially available equation solver software packages include the ability to do a Newton-Raphson iterative solution on sets of nonlinear simultaneous equations.
TKSolver* and Mathcaat are examples. TKSolver automatically invokes its Newton-Raphson solver when it cannot directly solve the presented equation set, provided that enough guess values have been supplied for the unknowns. These equation solver tools are quite convenient in that the user need only supply the equations for the system in "raw" form such as equation 4.4la. It is not necessary to arrange them into the Newton-Raphson algorithm as shown in the previous section. Lacking such a commercial equa-tion solver, you will have to write your own computer code to program the solution as described above. Reference [5] is a useful aid in this regard. The CD-ROM included with this text contains example TKSolver files for the solution of this fourbar position problem as well as others.