I am currently working on a plastic part design project on SolidWorks that is similar to our shampoo bottles that we all have at home: a container with an integrated cap on hinge with a knee pad that allows the "bistability" of the cap in the open/closed position.
Does anyone have a method of designing this type of hinge? Ideally, literature?
The objective is that the knee pad is built in such a way that by controlling the angle of the cap in relation to the body of the container (configurations), we can visualize the "open", "closed" positions, and a certain number of intermediate positions useful to check that there is no interference between the elements.
In practice, the plastic part is usually injected in a middle position. A thinner area serves as a hinge and the thick + parts make the spring.
It is during the deformation towards the closed position that the spring effect is created.
On SW the different configurations will only be approximations because the material is deformed during movement (simulation would give you the exact shape in a given position though)
Thank you all for your contributions; Unfortunately, none of them allowed me to really solve my problem. I just went around it by creating a new sketch of the hinge and knee brace elements for each configuration.