yeah the keyframing works, however i didnt want to have to do that because i'd like the project to be a competely keyframeless animation.but i'm sure one keyframe on frame 1 will be okay

Regarding one setting being off, that's what i think it is. I must have done/clicked something and now it's always resetting....I know this because when I did go back and do the mayabasics tutorial on rigid bodies , it didnt work how it is supposed to (and how it did the first time I ran the tutorial a month ago...it reset half of the planks back to the origin!

So now I try figure out what setting it is that causes this.

Thanks for the replies so far !

- lesia