This paper describes the development of a virtual reality environment which facilitates the design of spherical four-bar mechanisms. A short discussion of spherical mechanism design theory and computer-aided mechanism design is followed by a description of the virtual environment and the development and operation of the SphereVR program. The virtual environment allows the user to naturally interact with the input data and specify the design parameters while operating in a three-dimensional environment. We see this development as a logical extension of existing graphics-based spatial design software. The need for a three-dimensional design space is driven by the difficulty in specifying design inputs and constraints for a spatial problem using a two-dimensional interface. In addition, once the mechanism has been created, the virtual environment provides the opportunity for the user to visually verify that the mechanism will perform the desired three-dimensional motion
