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I believe that the issue here stems from the fact that Technic bricks and System bricks are not 100% compatible. Here's a slide from a great presentation which explains the details: This difference is barely noticable when building, especially in your scenario because the hinge adds some additional play, but I believe that LDD won't allow these to connect ...

This in not a LDView problem, but a conversion issue between LDD and LDraw. Only parts present in both libraries will be displayed. Moreover, the file (ldraw.xml) that defines the correspondance between parts of both systems must be up to date. Latest version of this mapping file is available here.

The LXFML file is an XML document, and there's an XSD document that you can use to validate any LXFML file, along with a textual description of the tags on the LUGNet forums supplied by the LDD Team a few years ago: LXF files - info and XML schema The key parts of the LXFML you're going to be interested in start with the <Scene> element, which ...

There are several editors which are based on the open LDraw part database. I believe that the most popular are MLCAD and LeoCAD. I personally use LDD, so I can't speak to the quality of the instruction generation from these tools, but they do at least offer the ability to create instructions. LeoCAD is probably your best bet for doing animations, but I ...

Although lxf files must be loaded with LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), it's not always the case that lxf files are loaded correct/completely with LDD. This because the fact that LDD uses a database where the parts are stored, but it doesn't contain all parts and the database changes from time to time. When trying to load older files, you have about 100% ...

LDD uses exact numbers, where as in real life ABS and polycarbonate have some give or flexibility that a computer program can't factor in. There are many documents about LEGO part stress that explain what a "legal" vs "illegal" build is. Any illegal build will not work in LDD. I break the rules all the time too, but LDD is looking at it from a pure math ...

There is also another solution called Mecabricks which is online based and works with WebGL. Therefore, you only need a browser to start building or check the 3D models already published by the other builders. However it is not compatible with LDD or Ldraw and part library is different and doesn't include as much parts as the others yet.

SR 3D builder is another good alternative I like to use, it uses the Ldraw parts library, but has a more intuitive connection system than MLCad, without the connection restrictions LDD has. I don't know that SR 3D builder supports mac, but I believe it fits your other requirements nicely.