Software suggestions for simple mechanical simulations? (Also: CAELinux)
 

I want to be able to simulate simple mechanical processes, involving cranks, cams, basic gears and that kind of thing. I'm not, for the time being, concerned with analysing stress on materials or anything of that kind. Is there software appropriate to that?

On the broader subject of CAE, has anyone tried AVLinux? Is its software professional level, student, or more amateur? And, of course, how much education is needed to use such tools?

For a listing of CAD/CAE applications: http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html

Can't help you with AVLinux.

dont know if my way is what your looking for but you could do your drawings with QCAD (indival sreens) save them as a jpg and stick them together with gimp (paste as new frame) then save it as a .gif.
Ive done this with some electrical circuits to show how they work.
any DWG to DFX convertor might be helpfull to change auto-cad files to dfx so qcad can use them.