Automatic tool angling to maximize reach?

[Weston]

In the attached examples, I oriented the edge planes toward a floating point that I manually adjusted over the platform. I would like to automate that but I'm not sure how. I could speculate where the 6th axis may be, in relation to the platform, but I assume there is a better way.

Any advice would be appreciated, even if just a link to an earlier thread I missed.

[Johannes @ Robots in Architecture]

Hello,
The problem for optimization is that for every application there are different priorities and different degrees of freedom, so it's hard to give a general advice. In your case with the rod, I assume that the tool-axis orientation is given, but you can rotate around the tool-axis?
Generally the orientation point often gets the job done.

If it's more complex you could do something like RobotMaster does for optimization: You basically create a series of X-values according to the number of planes and then draw a curve in that graph, with the Y value of the curve setting the rotation around to tool axis for that plane from lets say -3.14 to 3.14. Then you could even look into using Galapagos to optimize that curve, for example.
Just a random thought. But in general the orientation point usually works well!

Best,
Johannes