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Your first figure in five minutes

We build the textbook Atwood machine (two masses over a pulley), label it, run it, compare its acceleration with a = (m₁ − m₂) g / (m₁ + m₂), and export the figure. You can also open the finished one: Home → Marketplace → Atwood Machine (from Ordinate 2D).

1. Start a Research scene

Open the studio, press New (Home tab) and switch the title bar to Research. Research uses a small fixed time step and SI units, and draws the scene in textbook style.

2. A ceiling and a pulley

  1. Build → Ground / Wall. Drag a horizontal line near the top of the view; the hatched side is the solid side, so press ⇧F to put it above the line for a ceiling.
  2. Build → Pulley and click a little below the ceiling, in empty space: a fixed pulley (a wheel on a fixed axle). Clicked on a body instead, the pulley is mounted on it with a bracket and moves with it.

3. Two masses and a cable

  1. Build → Box. Drag two boxes below the pulley, one on each side.
  2. Select the left box and set its Mass to 2 kg in Properties; set the right one to 1 kg. Rename them m_1 and m_2 (F2); the subscript is drawn as one.
  3. Connect → Cable (⇧R). Click the left box, then the pulley (the cable wraps over it), then the right box. The cable is ideal: massless and inextensible.

4. Labels and a dimension

  1. Annotate → Label: click each box to attach a label, then type its text (m_1, m_2) in Properties; a label on a body follows it.
  2. Annotate → Gravity: one click places the g arrow.
  3. Annotate → Dimension: click two points to show a distance; points snap to body centres and follow them.

5. Run it and check

Press Play. The left box falls. Select it and press Analyze → Plot Selected: a graph of the box opens in the Graphs tab. Open Analyze → Table, then + Column ▾ → Quantity of the run… and add m₁'s vertical acceleration (its column is called ay1). Then + Column ▾ → Formula column… and type

(m2 - m1) * g / (m1 + m2)

m1 is the mass of the body named m₁ and g the size of gravity; the sign is negative because the box goes down and y points up. The two columns agree to about 0.2 %: the Validation page has this case among its benchmarks.

6. Export

  • Export → SVG Figure or PDF Figure: a vector figure that looks like the screen.
  • Export → TikZ: the same figure as LaTeX code, with a preview, scale and label size. It compiles with pdflatex, lualatex or xelatex.
  • Export → Video / GIF: the run as an MP4, WebM or GIF.

That is the whole workflow. Next: Building scenes for every tool, or Figures for more figure elements.