To Enter Preferences for a Force Balance Analysis
Use the Preferences tab of the Analysis Definition dialog box to specify the following information for force balance analyses:
• Use the Locked entities area to specify constraints for the force balance analysis. You can lock rigid bodies and connections, create a loadcell lock, disable/enable connections or delete locked entities. Locking rigid bodies fixes the position of one rigid body relative to another during the defined analysis. Locking connections removes the motion associated with their degree of freedom. A disabled connection is temporarily suppressed and is ignored by the analysis.
Only one loadcell lock can be active in a force balance analysis. You can define multiple loadcell locks but you can activate only one in the list. When you create a loadcell lock or highlight a previously defined one in the locked entities list, a shaded arrow appears at the selected point and in the specified direction. To view loadcell reaction results, you can create a loadcell reaction measure.
• Click 
to calculate the degrees of freedom (DOF) for your mechanism before you run a force balance analysis. Before you run the analysis, you must reduce the DOF to zero by applying rigid body locks, connection locks, or loadcell locks.
to calculate the degrees of freedom (DOF) for your mechanism before you run a force balance analysis. Before you run the analysis, you must reduce the DOF to zero by applying rigid body locks, connection locks, or loadcell locks.• You specify an Initial configuration for a force balance analysis. The configuration describes the relative orientation of the parts and rigid bodies in your mechanism. The current configuration is used by default to calculate the balance of forces. A Snapshot is available from an initial configuration list of available snapshots. Select a snapshot you saved in the Drag dialog box. Only the position of rigid bodies in your mechanism is used from a selected snapshot. Any constraints saved in the snapshot are ignored.
You can run the analysis immediately after defining it. When you click Run, the analysis definition is checked for errors in the same way as when you click OK. The defined analysis is run but is not added to the model. When you click OK, the software finishes the definition, creates the analysis, and adds the analysis definition to the model.