Animator problems

I must be doing something wrong but what?

For the past couple of days I have been trying to animate the operation
of a machine for a sales agent meeting with no success.
There are 9 motions to animate with a real time operation of 20 seconds.
I can set up the path of any one of them and it operates flawlessly.
However I can not get them to operate simultaneously.
The animation always stops when 4 movements are required at the same
time. After that point the movements become intermittent and jump
several steps at a time. Some movements are dependent on others. For
instance a Z axis on the end of a Y axis mounted on an x axis slide.
Others are pendulum style. I have simplified the assemblies as much as
possible, and even tried saving assemblies as parts to cut down on the
calculation time required. I have increased the time span to allow more
time to calculate and still no go. The computer is a pentium 4 3.2ghz
with 2 gig ram. The model uses about 500 meg when loaded.
Is there a limit on animation movements? Any tips. I need all the help I
can get. SW 2004 sp 4.1

Thanks
Dave Rhodes
Mechanical designer
G.N. Plastics Ltd.

 

I'v allways suppressed all mates afted I'v defined the animator paths.
Important thing is to also define the "static" paths of parts...

: I've noticed problems with flexible sub assemblies. They give that
: jerky motion you decribed. You can try dissolving them maybe?
:
: Also, if there are any mates limiting freedom, they will cause parts
: to move unpredictably. It sounds like there is in your model.
:
: It's those kinds of problems that made me look into equation driven
: animations (no paths). It's more of a pain to set up, but it's amazingly
: robust and the animations look fantastic when done.
:
: Mike Wilson
:
:

 

Thanks to Mike and Arto I got this thing working fairly well.
There is still one motion that hesitates at two points in the animation.
These are when other movements start up.
There were no flexible subassemblies used, all mates involved in the
motion were top level. I suppressed mates as suggested and things got a
lot better.
Thanks for the help
Dave