Poke thru(It's far worse than it looks as I've made some parts invisible & scaled down various parts) & V3 is kneeling & as you can see the front part of the robe did NOT bend back underneath her.  Whereas the back part did crumple as it should. 

Where have I gone wrong?

Thanks :)

2nd part 1st ('cos that's probably easier...)
I suspect that you didn't set the cloth to collide with the ground (or whatever V3 is kneeling on). The back is OK 'cos it's resting on V3's legs, but at the front there's nothing for the cloth to collide with.

A couple words of advice when colliding with the ground:

1. In the anim part from standing to kneeling, move v3 forwards at the same time. That way the cloth will fold under the legs. If you don't do this then the cloth will just puddle messily (unless, of course, that's the effect you want).
2. Leave a fairly large gap between V3's knees and the ground (at least as much as the width of V3's index finger, possibly more). This will give the cloth room to move. If you don't leave the gap then the clothifying will probably fail, either just stopping short, taking forever between frames or start sending bits of the cloth shooting off in random directions.

As for the poke-thru...
I suspect that there are several culprits.

1. Looking at the pose I suspect that there's not enough room at the armpit for the cloth to fold properly (see above about leaving room). It is one of the problems with the cloth-room that if some part of the cloth gets trapped between close-together body parts then all sorts of nasty things can happen.
2. Is the cloth also intersecting with the head-gear? And colliding with it? NOTHING that collides should be intersecting before starting the sim. (Yes, I know that the "draping frames" can sometimes sort this out, but its not reliable. Of course, if its not in the collision-list, then it doesn't matter. (Side-note: be careful of just selecteg "V3" to collide with if you have anything else parented to the figure - especially hair. It gets included in the list and can sometimes cause chaos...)

Apart from that... there are so many things that might go wrong it's difficult to give specifics. However, one thing I would suggest is to step very carefully through the simulation, viewing each frame form all angles. Try to pin-point where the poke-thru starts to happen. Very often that can give you a clue as to what is the root cause, which is a great step forward:-))

Best of luck, and

Cheers,
Diolma

Thanks Diloma - the ground sounds like a plan & yes in that pose the arms are very close to the body.

Thanks again :)

oops - forgot to ask 1 question - do I run a sep. sim for the ground? or do I just tick off ground & figure1 at the same time?

Thanks again :)

You caught me just in time (off to bed very soon.. - it's just gone midnight here) :-))

No, not a separate sim, everything that the cloth should (or might) collide against should be added to the "Collide against" list. Clear the existing Sim then re-run it.

Word of advice: When you've got your Sim all set up and ready to roll - SAVE! When the Sim goes FUBAR (and it happens often) you can just quit (or terminate with extreme predjudice) and reload the saved file, knowing that all the settings are still applied. Then you go in and alter just the ones that you know were wrong. Oh, and when the FUBAR happens it's always best to exit Poser (if that's not already happened) and restart it to free up memory.

Dynamic cloth just reacts to (sort-of) physical events. It knows nothing about what's happening around it except when something hits it (if that something is in the collision list). The only things other than that it does "know" about are Gravity (always) and Wind (If you've added a wind-force oojit). However, it DOES take "momentum" (and "air pressure" - but that's a bit more esoteric) into account.

It's all experiment, experiment, ex...... (and try to remember what causes what..)

BTW. If you ever want to get your character sitting on a chair (or setee, bed, whatever), try the following..
Pose your character so that it's sitting on the whatever. Try to do this such that there is a minimum of movement - people who are sitting don't move around much.. move the chair rather than the figure to get the pose. Then, in Frame 1 move the chair backwards and downwards, well away from any clothing, so that it glides up and forwards during the sim.
In the "Final pose" frame, force a keyframe, enter the anim editor and break spline there (that stops any possible "overrun" of the animation of the figure or the chair).
SAVE! Run the sim...
When all works well, shift the rest of the scene to match:-)) (There are better, simpler ways to do this, but I don't have time right now to go into it.. - and this only works for still shots, not for animations, which is a whole different ball-game, although interesting.)

Cheers,
Diolma

Once the pose is set up, go back to frame 1 and move the chair down and backwards

Very informative! Thank you VERY much :)

Have a good sleep :)