A way around landing gear rotation weirdness in VAB?

[CloudlessEchoes]

I'm noticing that when you place landing legs, you you can't rotate them around the attach surface, but on some strange angle to it.  I don't recall this issues prior to 1.1.  For instance, if you put a cubic octogonal strut on the bottom of a tank let's say, and then try to put an LT-1 landing strut on, it will face straight upward and attach properly.  But no matter what I do, I can't get it to face down.  I could rotate the octogonal strut 180 deg into the part but that's not what I wanted to do.  Is there a way around this?

[bewing]

For the landing leg colliders in the Unity 5 upgrade to work properly, the axis of the leg has to be along the line of the leg.

I don't know why you can't get it to face down, though. You should always be able to get any rotation you like by doing one rotation to get the leg horizontal, another to get it on the right plane, and then a third to put it in final position.

However, using landing legs at all in 1.1.2 is not something I'd recommend.  If you use any other type of part to land on, it should work differently and better.

[N_Danger]

2 hours ago, CloudlessEchoes said:

I'm noticing that when you place landing legs, you you can't rotate them around the attach surface, but on some strange angle to it.  I don't recall this issues prior to 1.1.  For instance, if you put a cubic octogonal strut on the bottom of a tank let's say, and then try to put an LT-1 landing strut on, it will face straight upward and attach properly.  But no matter what I do, I can't get it to face down.  I could rotate the octogonal strut 180 deg into the part but that's not what I wanted to do.  Is there a way around this?

 I haven't seen a way around it. I use the rotate tool on the leg to get it into position myself.

1 hour ago, bewing said:

For the landing leg colliders in the Unity 5 upgrade to work properly, the axis of the leg has to be along the line of the leg.

I don't know why you can't get it to face down, though. You should always be able to get any rotation you like by doing one rotation to get the leg horizontal, another to get it on the right plane, and then a third to put it in final position.

However, using landing legs at all in 1.1.2 is not something I'd recommend.  If you use any other type of part to land on, it should work differently and better.

Oh you can use them and I still so. But every slope over 20 deg is covered in grease and the warranty is void (causing the leg to explode) if anything but the ground touches them. 

[bewing]

12 minutes ago, N_Danger said:

Oh you can use them and I still so. But every slope over 20 deg is covered in grease and the warranty is void (causing the leg to explode) if anything but the ground touches them. 

Heh. On a 20 degree slope, I would hope that you would retract all but the downhill-facing leg.  Once some non-leg parts are on the ground, most of the sliding should stop.

[N_Danger]

2 minutes ago, bewing said:

Heh. On a 20 degree slope, I would hope that you would retract all but the downhill-facing leg.  Once some non-leg parts are on the ground, most of the sliding should stop.

 I have had a miner on Val, with 2 drills down and running, slide down hill for 2 KM recently.

[CloudlessEchoes]

2 hours ago, bewing said:

For the landing leg colliders in the Unity 5 upgrade to work properly, the axis of the leg has to be along the line of the leg.

That explains it. As for getting it to face down, I could rotate it twice, but it doesn't end up perfectly parallel. I'll try working with that some more. I also found another work around for my example: attach it to one cubic strut the way that it insists defaulting to, then attach that strut to another and I can have it the direction I want to.  Cubic struts seem to default one direction towards surfaces, but you can flip them when attaching to a node point.