title	Mechanism Design and Simulation - Collaboration Guide
description	Contributing guide for Mechanism Design and Simulation course content
tableOfContents	true
sidebar	order 999

Mechanism Design and Simulation

Read this course at: https://siliconwit.com/education/mechanism-design-simulation/

Hands-on engineering experiments using interactive browser-based mechanism simulators. Each lesson provides structured lab exercises with data collection, Python analysis scripts, and design insight questions.

Lessons

#	Title	Simulator
1	Crank-Slider Mechanism Experiments (8 experiments)	Crank-Slider Simulator
2	Four-Bar Linkage Experiments (9 experiments)	Four-Bar Linkage Simulator
3	Scissor Lift Experiments (9 experiments)	Scissor Lift Simulator

File Structure

mechanism-design-simulation/
├── index.mdx
├── crank-slider-experiments.mdx
├── four-bar-linkage-experiments.mdx
├── scissor-lift-experiments.mdx
└── README.md

How to Contribute

All commands below work on Linux, macOS, and Windows (using Git Bash, PowerShell, or Command Prompt with Git installed).

For Team Members (with push access)

First time setup (clone the repo once):

git clone https://github.com/SiliconWit/mechanism-design-simulation.git
cd mechanism-design-simulation

Every time you start working:

git pull origin main

Always pull before making changes. This avoids conflicts with other contributors.

After making your changes:

git add .
git commit -m "Brief description of what you changed"
git push origin main

If you get a push error (someone pushed before you):

git pull origin main

Git will merge the changes automatically in most cases. If there is a conflict, Git will mark the conflicting lines in the file. Open the file, choose which version to keep, then:

git add .
git commit -m "Resolve merge conflict"
git push origin main

Tips to avoid conflicts:

• Always git pull origin main before you start working
• Push your changes as soon as you are done, do not hold onto uncommitted work for long
• Coordinate with other contributors so two people are not editing the same file at the same time

For External Contributors (without push access)

1. Fork the repository: SiliconWit/mechanism-design-simulation
2. Clone your fork:

   git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/mechanism-design-simulation.git
   cd mechanism-design-simulation

3. Make your changes and commit:

   git add .
   git commit -m "Brief description of what you changed"
   git push origin main

4. Open a Pull Request against main on the original repository
5. Describe what you changed and why in the PR description

Content Standards

• All lesson files use .mdx format
• Each experiment must include: objective, setup instructions, data collection table, Python script, expected results, and design question
• Code blocks should include a title attribute:

  ```python title="analyze_velocity.py"
  import numpy as np
  import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  ```

• Use Starlight components (<Tabs>, <TabItem>, <Steps>, <Card>) where appropriate
• Python scripts must work with CSV files exported from the simulators
• Experiments should progress from basic observation to quantitative analysis

Local Development

To preview the full site locally, clone the main site repository and initialize submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules <main-repo-url>
cd siliconwit-com
npm install
npm run dev

To test a production build:

npm run build

License

This course content is released under the MIT License.