To access the regular animation tool in motion study, you first need to make sure all the parts that you would like to stay fix have to be fully define. The idea of of motion study works is you will need to move parts from position A to position B while Solidwork will try to figure out the path of moving two parts. The successful rate of each animation is highly depends on the complexity of your design. Even after you finish your animation through motion study and everything looks fine and smooth, it is still highly possible that during the recording process through record feature in SolidWork might destroy your animation during the recalculation process.
While we struggle with creating animation, we found a better and easier way to create animation in SolidWork, that is the mate controller feature. Utilizing mate controller, you could smoothly moving parts in direction and angle without worry about breaking mates. After saving the movement between each position, you could move on to other position for your animation without worried that the recalculation process will sabotage your previous animation. The best part is after your finish your mate controller movement, you are free to move them back to regular animation for further editing.