Can't animate arm with multiple joints

Hi all,

I have some problems with Solidworks 2004 and Animator.

What I want is basically animate a robotic arm with two joints (hinges).
My assembly looks something like this 2D sketch:

C----J----J----

y
^
|->x


The dashes are the parts of the arm connected with hinges (J). C is a
carriage that moves freely along the x axis. What I want to do is create a
path for movement of the rightmost part of the arm relative to the middle
part. This fails to work properly if the middle part is moved relative to
the leftmost part. Then the carriage starts sliding and all sorts of
strange things happen.

I have tried creating a hidden part to control the motion of a single
joint, but have not succeeded in fixing this problem. Also, using
different configurations for the different positions of the arm and
switching between them did not work since the animation paths are
configuration specific also.

I could always fix the middle part and stitch together the .avi files in
the end, but this is somewhat tiring.

Any help with this is much appreciated!

regards,

 

Is it possible that there are multiple solutions for the motion of the arm?

 

That is exactly the problem. I guess I will have to fix some of the parts
of the arm to assure there is only one solution for the motion. SW might
not be able to guess what I want to happen