Make sure the motors are set to physics activated and kinematic.

I just emailed too.

Not sure why it was not letting you set the hinge target. The motor was kinematic. All I had to do was attach it. I did check with the physics disabled on the motor, just to see if I was dreaming, and it would not target. So it really must have physics enabled.

Chock that one up to Mr. Murphy, I guess!

I have found that selection process a bit flaky at times, but I have no idea why it refuses to work at all for you. I do remember from other softwares over the years that sometimes weird non-interaction with menus can be caused by Video drivers being out of date, graphics cards not being powerful enough or sometimes even anti-virus plugins doing weird things. It is a shame for you, as like I mentioned before, I have found the potential to animate and even build props inside iClone a massive time-saver over external tools.

Hi 

Thank you both.  I have found that I am more inclined to enter data than to move things with the mouse.  That means that I will click on the item in the list rather than it's visual in the main window.  Here is what I can say for absolute certain.  If you want to select a target for the bottom half of the hinge, you must select the object in the edit screen.  If you select the object in the Scene list (which is what I did 100% of the time), it will not pick it up as the target.

Another bit of interesting observation is that it is possible to reorient an object while keeping the pivot point consistent.  I the cases where I was reporting that an object was flipping 90 degrees out of phase when I hit run, you can look at the assembly and it looks perfect, you can check the pivot points and have them all line up ahead of time.  

You can then hit run, and an item in your assembly can flip 90 degrees out of sync with the other objects even though they are all attached.  When you hit stop, the item will still be 90 degrees out.  You have to "Detach" all of the objects that are attached to the object that flipped, then rotate the object using the rotate gizmo, and then reattach the items to the object.  Now when you hit play, the item will not flip since it is properly aligned.  When you recheck your pivot points and transform information it will say exactly what it did when it was flipping.  It's like there's a hidden panel.

I am extremely grateful to rampa who took my file and made it work.  With that as a guide, I have been working all afternoon on the other engine assembly.  I am keenly aware of all settings being local.  I am trying to match every single property and value between the two motors and I am finding things that don't match or change after I have set them.  At the moment, my left motor is at a different height, and the left prop is as well.  Looking at x,y and z values shows that they are the same except for Y which is negative on the starboard side of the aircraft.  I can opt to edit the pivot point, and it will let me.  I set the pivot point where it should be, and it moves, but the object does not.  I then move the object by hand or with the values in the transform section.  Once I get it lined up, I then have to move the pivot point again.  The thing is, that the information that I put in the pivot point and then the transform is the same data that I had originally put in both locations, so something is changing.  I'm not sure if it's the hinge data, or the object data, or why it is changing what I set,

In theory, I should be able to put the exact data that is in the motor/propeller assembly that rampa did, into my other motor assembly, use a negative of the Y value to put it on the other end of the wing and that should be it.  Well kids, it don't work like that!!

rampa, if you want to look at it with both motors, let me know and I will send it over.  There should be a logical explanation.

thanks

Tim 

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.

Further information that just makes sense now.  When the model was created, I'm sure they took the finished parts from one motor and mirrored them across.  Since the motor is a mirror image of itself, once it gets broken apart in IClone, I then have to feed it coordinates to mirror the other engine.  Ie it needs to rotate 180 along it's z axis.  It wants to be 90 degrees along the x axis which I don't understand, but it is oriented correctly when I look at it and when I hit run.  It is still not rotating from straight up to pointing forward,  I need to reverse the force to be negative, but there is no force setting that I can see.  I tried reversing the 90 to -90 that is set in the constraint on the left engine, but it was ignored.

This is driving me nuts!!!!  IClone6 is easier???  At least I could do it when keyframed everything.

Thanks

Tim

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.

If you create one motor and one propeller assembly and it works, hold down CTRL while moving it and it will create a working duplicate. You could then replace the propeller on the new copy with a counter rotating one and of course change the force to the opposite direction.

I actually have an osprey model already. It's maybe a little different, but probably good enough. Shall I just send you that? You can send what you have if you wish. Sooner or later this will all make sense.

One thing to remember is that when you drop a constraint on something, it basically links the thing to the constraint. Thus the constraint acts as the pivot when it's being used.

Got the plane from here.

@swooooop,

Did mine the other day.

I had to separate the propellers. The original had them as one object.

So a few more minutes.

But the iClone part was just dropping in two hinge constraints to be the motors. You might want to upgrade from iClone 3, or whatever.

@primaveranz

Thanks.  I understand how to clone the object, but in this case, the actual motor has vents and scoops, so it has to be a mirror image.

best,

Tim

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.