[ODE] Fixed joints

[Roel van Dijk]

On Wednesday 17 December 2003 12:30, arcad wrote:
> Works very strange - a legs bend displaced and turn round lid. Afterwards
> they return on place. Obviously when use Fixed joint bodies must be not
> displaced and turn round comparatively each other. Or this not so? Explain
> please?
> Is it Beforehand thanked, Arcad.
Fixed joint is not a complete working joint. I believe it is for debugging 
purposes only. If you want to make a table or something you should use a 
dGeomTransformClass geom: 
http://opende.sourceforge.net/ode-latest-userguide.html#ref89
Basicly you create one body with multiple geoms.

>From the fixed joint documentation 
(http://opende.sourceforge.net/ode-latest-userguide.html#ref52):
"Using this joint is almost never a good idea in practice, except when 
debugging. If you need two bodies to be glued together it is better to 
represent that as a single body."
"Currently the fixed joint does not support a non-identity relative rotation 
between two bodies, it only supports a relative offset."
I think that explains your troubles.

It would be really cool if someone could make the fixed joint behave better. 
There are more purposes for a fixed joint then creating composite objects.