Excerpt from Innovative Shape Design: A Configuration Space Approach Kinematic pairs are of great importance in mechanical design since they constitute the elementary building blocks of mechanical devices. In this paper, we deal with the design of composite kinematic pairs. Simple kinematic pairs, such as prismatic joints, screw-bolt pairs have a single kinematic behavior describable as a rotation or a translation (or a combination of both) around a fixed axis in space. Composite kinematic pairs. On the other hand can have several different kinematic behaviors along a number of axes. In designing kinematic pairs, we distinguish between two variants of the design task: new design and redesign. In new design, for a given description of the desired kinematic behavior of the pair, the goal is to determine the precise shapes of the two objects that achieve this behavior. In redesign, in addition to the desired kinematic behavior, initial shapes for the two objects are also given. The goal is then to modify the given shapes of the objects to obtain the desired behavior. The theory presented in this paper deals with both variants uniformly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.