I've been modeling some robotic systems with a number of parts, and assemblies. I'm using flexible assemblies to allow motion of subsystems. I am modeling a series of motions driven by motors whose motion functions are defined by segments. When playing back an animation everything seems fine. When it recalculates things get whonky:it seems that the constraints get confused. Or, If i try to just save the animation without recalculating, things show up fine, but when it saves the animation the parts start to dance around. I'm trying to render the files. So i've tried rendering as frames, but the later frames get all messed up as well. Everything was working fine until it seems I reached a limit of about 12 different segmented motions, from this point on it seems the complexity starts confusing things. i'm not switching over to trying to do the animation in Blender, but that's really a pain to use as well, partcularly for someone used to working with a feature heirarchy/history - also it's not really helpful since anytime i change my models i'll have to rexport and rebuild the animations all over again - not so helpful.
the behavior seems somewhat similar to this posting: https://forum.solidworks.com/message/266718#266718
any ideas? I'm assuming it has something to do with the flexible assemblies. but rebuilding the system based on how to animate it does not make sense; i prefer my assemblies to be driven off of how they are to be assembled and operating.
thanks for any ideas.
(Win8, SW2013 SP3, running on an i7-4820K, 32gb ram, nvidia quadro k4000. I also tried on my laptop w530, win8.1, SW2013 SP0, i7-3840QM 24gb ram, quadro K1000M)
Its difficult to know whats wrong without actually looking at the files. Not much help I know
My rule of thumb for setting up animations is this. Keep them as simple as possible. That doesn't mean they can't look complex, that means give SW very minimal things to solve to create the animation. This typically involves building an animation specific assembly. The assembly model you use for engineering and the assembly model you'd create for an animation typically in my experience are set up completely different.
One of the things you never want to do is use flexible sub assemblies, it always leads to disaster, rework and frustration. At least it has for me. All moving "things" should be mated/constrained at the top level assembly. That doesn't mean you can't use subassemblies. That means any parts/subassemblies or parts within sub assemblies that have to move should be placed at and mated at the top level assembly. Its the only way Motion is reliable for animation work.
I know its not what you wanted to hear but after creating lots of animations I've learned it really is reality.