I have an assembly with three subsets that I would like to animate. I've already practiced animating my subassemblies each on their own and it works very well, whether it's with the constraint drivers or the animation system with the motors but now I'd like to move on to the big piece.
I tried a little to animate my main assembly by taking what I had done on each sub-assembly but in the end it's hellish, it's much too heavy so it constantly lags and as I have to make my sub-assemblies flexible I keep getting error messages on the initial positions etc...
So do you know if we have the possibility to "import" or find an animation made in a subset, directly in the mvt study of the main set? I've been looking for a while so I don't think so but you may have an idea.
Happy to welcome you to the forum. I hope that we can help you solve some problems, but also that we can benefit from your knowledge and experience.
To answer your question, the main pitfall is the one you mentioned, namely the "flexible sub-assemblies".
On the other hand, the animations belong to one file and only one (non-shareable) so in your case, the big ASM. In addition, if you have a large number of connectors (axes) and you want to use gravity, then he offers you tickets to the Parthenon.
The only solution is to create your animation from scratch in the big ASM. You can save a little time by redoing by hand what you did in the ASW s/s.
The animation system is quite archaic and has never been the subject of any evolution for more than 12 years.
Kind regards
PS: If you have an important need, maybe look at meca3D @m.blt can tell you more.
To extend @Zozo_mp's answer: if it is a question of animating the subassemblies of the main assembly of a mechanical assembly, Meca3D does not do better than the SolidWorks animation module.
A mechanism is modeled by an assembly whose moving elements are the components of the first level of its construction shaft, each of which is considered a rigid part in the mechanical sense. So there is no "flexibility" of the subassemblies, even if they have been the subject of separate simulations.
On the other hand, Meca3D simulation of a complex assembly is generally possible. We still have to agree on the complex term: I can estimate the feasibility of a study with Meca3D if you can share your model... Or at least an image that gives an idea of the structure of the system.
You only confirmed what I thought @Zozo_mp, each study is specific to its assembly and the best is to animate at the highest level so in its main assembly if you have several subsets. On the other hand I didn't grab the part with the connectors.
So since my first post I have continued to practice and I have looked around on other forums where I have had other opinions and I think that finally there are not 36 ways: -or to continue to animate with flexible s/s sets but the constraints will be in the s/s sets and it will be a mess in the implementation of the animation. -or to break down the s/s together to have the constraints at the highest level but it overloads the shaft even more.
So for my part I succeeded better and faster with the second case and especially with the constraint pilot. To be able to set up the positions and import everything into the mvt study, I found it less cumbersome to use than fiddling with the motors etc... But I think that the fact that the driver only manages certain constraints, can show its limits in some cases.
sorry @m.blt I can't share anything for the moment but I'll look at it on my own and it will allow me to discover Mecha3D that I don't know.
Be careful with stress driver because: 1°) these functions are very limited 2°) if you want to change the order of the movements it's quickly unmanageable (above 10 actions). This is due to the fact that you don't have a timeline. Constraint pilot and just to animate the opening of a double swing gate But if you have a very limited number of actions, this is the solution effectively
