Working Model is an engineering simulation software product. Virtual mechanical components, such as springs, ropes, and motors are combined with objects in a 2D working space. After the software is run, the program will simulate the interaction of the model's parts and can also graph the movement and force on any element in the project. It is useful for basic physics simulations, and can be quite a powerful dynamic geometric analytical tool, once you learn it. One drawback is the pulley simulation feature is limited to the 'string through a hole' type. WM has a sister program Called Interactive Physics the fundamental difference between the two seems to be WM will read .dxf files which can be converted to 'objects' inside WM.
WM was originally introduced in the early 1990s as a boxed software product from Knowledge Revolution in San Francisco, for Macintosh. Knowledge Revolution was acquired by MSC Software in Santa Ana, CA, and WM than resold to Design Simulation Technologies, Inc. of Canton, Michigan.
WM has a retail price of ~US$2,500, but a free evaluation 'demo' version, which will import .dxf, but has 'save' disabled, is at http://workingmodel.com/WM2D/demo.php
Similar, but not as analytical, 2D physics sandbox simulators are: Physion(free), and Phun.
Famous quotes containing the words working and/or model:
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the most important things we adults can do for young children is to model the kind of person we would like them to be.”
—Carol B. Hillman (20th century)