Reason for Cycle Errors While Constraining

When creating a constraint system many times we encounter cycle errors even if we know that some transfroms should not change. For example if a joint is affecting translation of a locator in some way and locator calculates the rotation of this joint, they should be unaffected by each other because they change different parts of the transformation. However, we end up having cycle because we are using world space transformation values.

When we are using worldspace transformation values, we use worldMatrix of the transform node. If the object is moved by any mean worldMatrix needs to be calculated causing it to be marked dirty. So even if we change only rotation the whole matrix attribute is marked dirty. Hence we will see a cycle error in the above example. 

One way to avoid cycle errors is to use the parent of the object that you want to constrain to. Or you can use local space transformation if it works as part of the whole setup.