[ODE] Re: center of mass

[Nagymathe Denes]

Hi,

1. the body will be where you set its position. But if you want the compound 
to move as it should (see 2), it's your job to place the body where the CM 
of the system is. But to help doing so, dMassAdd calculates the necessary 
position and stores that vector in mass.c (see 3)

2. Geoms do not have any mass, only bodies, so this is up to you. If you 
think them as some homogeneous material, you can set dMass-es for them by 
dMassSet* methods, but it's only for your convenience. But for example you 
can also create a body with the mass properties of a box, and attach a 
sphere geom to it with different position for collision. It will move as an 
invisible heavy box built into a lightweight sphere. or sg. like that. :o)

3. yes, and see above. if you watch the example in text_boxstack, it creates 
a dMass 'accumulator', and dMassAdd()-s the translated and rotated dMass-es 
of the geoms to it. At the end, the 'accumulator' dMass contains the 
position where you should place the body, BUT as in the example the 3 geoms 
are encapsulated into geomtransforms, and the positions in the masses were 
set relative to the _intended_ center (just like the geom positions), the 
position in the accumulated mass is also relative to that intended position. 
So as the body must have the CM in its center, the dMass has to be 'reseted' 
(that's the last line you've included), and also either the geoms or the 
body itself has to be moved with this relative position vector calculated in 
the accumulated mass to match the positions. The text_boxstack example does 
the former option.

4. see 3 :o)

Denes