Analysis and design method of a class of reconfigurable parallel mechanisms by using reconfigurable platform

•Planar and spatial platforms can be used to design reconfigurable mechanisms.•Some reconfigurable platforms were designed to propose mechanism.•Single-stage and double-stage planar platforms were evolved to planar platform.•single-loop platform can be evolved to multi-loop platform due to Lie Group.•The performance and optimization analysis for a typical mechanism were performed.