Spatial layouts for complex mechanical systems are important both for the reliability design and industrial esthetics design of products. Existing of extra constrains caused by specific connections among basic mechanisms makes the layout problem particular and complex. In this paper, several common connecting relations existing in complex mechanical systems are generalized into three kinds of connections, serial connections, parallel connections, and closed connections, and then constrain equations caused by these connections are set up based on transforming matrixes. Expressing spatial spaces occupied by basic mechanisms with cuboid model, and dealing with constrains and interferences in mechanical systems with the fitness function, the spatial layout problem of complex mechanical systems is calculated based on an adaptive genetic algorithm. At last, taking a complex mechanical system consisting of eight basic mechanisms with parallel and serial connections as an example, the efficiency and validity of the algorithm presented in this paper have been verified.

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