SP 3.5.6, SU8:
In the attached I was evaluating SP to see if it could be used to explore how simple mechanical links would behave. After lots of mistakes I did get it to work.
After creating a basic arm & hinge group, I copied this group over and over. I found that group copies do not make a unique instance of the hinge. It does not matter if I copy & paste or use the move copy. I still had to edit each new group, delete the copied hinge and add a new hinge. Is there a better way to speed up building models such as a way to edit the hinge ID? "Copy physics" does not seem to do anything useful.
Speaking of tedium, is there really no key macro or scripting to speed up building repetitive models?
During simulation I can sometimes spin an arm and get it to rotate very rapidly. When it does this, the hinge point does not stay located to the static base and the rotating arm does not even stay within the plane of rotation. It acts like the hinge pivot is elastic. The result is a cool tri-copter effect which might make a great drone model, but I have to ask what's up with that?
The parallelogram links only rotate in one very specific pattern. If I have built it correctly, there should be more freedom of motion.