Cool, glad you got that thing with the .ma files sussed. Wouldv'e mentioned that thing with the notepad if I'd realised, sorry.

As for the animation, uh-huh. That's exactly how mine turns out.

What exactly are you after may I enquire? Do you want it so that just the outside two balls fly away from the bunch in the center, or do you want something like what it's doing now, where all of the balls break apart now and then.

If you play with the gravity field you get a different effect, it's currently at 18.6, or double earth's. Setting it to 9.8 gives a slower animation, with less forcefull impacts.

You may find that playing around with the Bounciness, Damping, Static Friction and Dynamic Friction fields of the balls will give you a more pleasing result.

Just shift select all of the balls then edit these fields in the channel box. This way you avoid having to set each attribute for each of the five balls. You just set each one once and all 5 balls are modified simultaneously.

I found a bounciness of 0.95, Damping 0.1, Static Friction 0.1, Dynamic Friction 0.8 gave a result that I liked better.

Now to find that tute and learn more about the rigid solver...

Simon