[ODE] Joints

[nenene]

Hello everyone,
the reason why I start with ode was the following:
I want connect two boddys with a hinge joint. Give the joint a
specific angle and the result should be the torque in the joint.
(Does someone know how I can solve the problem in ode ?)
But at the moment I have fundamental problems:

First I attached two boddy´s with a ball joint.
I wonder that there is no function to get the angels of the joint ?

My second try was the hinge. I setup the Anchor and tryed to setup
the Axis. But when I use dJointGetHingeAxis(...) it returns differnt values.
The manual says "When an axis is set it will be normalized to unit length.
The adjusted axis is what the axis getting functions will return."
But I am not sure what it mean.
How can I setup a hinge with a defined axis around Z-axis for example ?

thx
marco