How makes all low values in the symbolic calculation become zero?

Question

How can I make all low values in a SymPy expression zero? For example, my result is:

1.0*a1*cos(q1) - 6.12e-17*(a2*sin(q2) + a3*sin(q2 + q3) + a4*sin(q2 + q3 + q         


        

Answer 1

A direct way to do this is to replace such numbers with 0. A naive eq.subs(small, 0) will fail because small that you enter is not likely to be exactly the same as the number. But eq.atoms(Float) will give you the set of such numbers:

>>> eq.xreplace(dict([(n,0) for n in eq.atoms(Float) if abs(n) < 1e-12]))
1.0*a1*cos(q1) + (1.0*a2*cos(q2) + 1.0*a3*cos(q2 + q3) + 1.0*a4*cos(q2 + q3 + q4))*cos(q1)