Welcome!

How is this dress supposed to be simulated ? I have tried both a timeline and memorized pose, and the pieces of the dress are intersecting and blowing up like crazy. As you can see from the attached screenshot, the dress is already blowing up and it hasn't contacted anything but the character (pardon the close to nudity).

Memorized pose, simulated animation 60, best. This is my settings where never blowed up. Show a pose and i gladly make a similar for prove its not blowing.
One thing when i could mess up, when i used lot of pose after together, and somewhy the daz tried to simulate all of the poses, in that case i deleted the character, made a good pose and was good. Im not an expert - but expect this i wasnt able to blow up.

Ps: and between poses you should hit reset. The image looked like u set a pose and set another without hit reset - at least looks like to me.
If you want, i gladly send my dforce settings in .duf or with screenshots.

Hello
I suggest to use:
Collision mode: Best
Duration: Animated (Custom) 90 frames
Start Bones from Memorised Pose

Don`t use the body parts very very close, because this way all of dforced outfit blows up, make a bit distance (like hand put on lap, when the outfit is middle, instead it make a bit distance, and after simulation remove the distance).

I hope its helps, this is my (pretty simple) dForce rules, what works with every dForced outfit. :3

i set a weird pose as example

Thanks for your input. I did the proper procedures when setting up the simulation, but perhaps the problem was with Daz which every once in a while coughs up a furball on the strangest things. I had been working on other stuff and had done other simulations prior. I'll give it another try fresh and see if that helps -- as you can see it was blowing up with the slightest movement which I thought was very strange so I wanted to check with others before going on a wild goose chase

feel free send me the scene, or pose i test it. i couldnt set a weird pose where it blowed up, you made me super curious now, in private please send the pose or at least a screenie :3