Single-valued function representations in linkage mechanisms design

Examples of graphical representations of single-valued functions of two variables which occur in the analysis and synthesis of linkage mechanisms are presented. The authors have developed their own software which has advantages over existing packages when examining penalised objective functions with very large peaks. The generated 3D surface and contour map plots are shown to be of great usefulness for investigating the design space in optimisation-based synthesis problems and in the analysis of multi-degree-of-freedom mechanisms.