Positioning jointed bodies

[frdfsnlght]

I've got 5 bodies similar to the car in the CarTerrain demo: 1 main body (the chassis) and 4 'wheel' bodies, all connected with JointHinge2's. When I created the bodies and joints, the chassis body was at the origin, so I offset the wheels and joints to get them in the correct positions relative to the chassis.

Now, I want to 'pick up' the chassis and place it at a certain position and orientation before running the simulation. How can I do this [easily]?

If I position the chassis body and start the simulation, ode sees this as a huge error in the joints between the chassis and wheels and corrects by moving all the bodies around. And of course, the chassis is no longer where I wanted it anymore.

Is there any way to position/orient a set of bodies as a unit? I don't want to have to position/orient each body using a bunch of transforms, although I could, I suppose. Is there an easier way?

-Tab