I built a long length of cord using the Godot Editor. The cord is made up of 60 capsule-shaped RigidBody3D segments joined to each other via Generic6DOFJoint3D joints.
The cord has to be long so that I can wind it around the two pulleys, as shown in my very rough sketch below:
(I find it useful to keep a wad of scrap paper next to me to take the odd note and draw rough sketches and flowcharts while I’m busy)
Here is a video of a successful attempt to manoever the cord over the top pulley of my crude piece of apparatus. This was after a number of tries, as the higher one lifted the cord the more the weight of the overall cord increased, due to the mass of each segment coming into play, as it was no longer lying on the table. Eventually the weight of the cord counter balanced the force required to move the cord, and the cord slipped to the table surface. I’ve partly solved by this problem by reducing the mass of each segment, reducing the gravity contribution, and making grabpoint/anchorpoint yellow sphere larger.
At the end of the video i show the heavy wrecking ball fastened to a short length of thick rope.
One can also see a motor driving a set of intermeshed gearwheels. The overall ratio of the number of gear teeth on each gearwheel determines the speed and strength of the final gear’s output ( i.e. the lower the speed, the higher the strength) Note that each gear is made of gear teeth comprising capsule rigidbody collision shapes.
I will be spending the next few days (hopefully, not weeks) getting the pulley and cord apparatus working.