How do I make sure all my rocket nozzles are level with each other?

[Trekkin]

I\'m trying to build rather large rockets, and it keeps happening that i\'m a bit off in placing rings of fuel tanks, so that only, say, six engines bear the weight of the rocket, rather than the full 24, which causes structural failure. Is there any way to ensure my rockets are level?

[sjwt]

I have been asking for a way to do this for ages, we need to be able to lock any one or two of the X,Y and Z axis in the VAB. Hopefully it comes with the new assembly set-up in 0.16

You can manly edit the .craft file, and alter the POS line for each item,

as you add things to the craft, they come in at the bottom of this list.

So you would make your top stage, and get that as level as you can, at say the 1st fuel tank, and surrounding ones, then set them up the same.. I will post some examples for you..

[Sordid]

Alternatively you can edit your settings.cfg and change VAB_ANGLE_SNAP_INCLUDE_VERTICAL from False to True.

[sjwt]

Open up the file 'T1-un.craft' in word pad(when dealing with your crafts, all ways back up the files after you have gotten out KSP)

Please note the way the file is devided up, for this example their is the MK1 Pod, one Fuel tank, followed by 2 tanks in symetry.

The first tank is set up with the POS as '-0.4698442,11.53677,0.002250103' that middle number is the hight.

note the next two tanks are at '...,11.47266,...' you just need to change 11.47266 to 11.53677 for both those entry\'s..

save the file and exit notepad, load KSP and look at the craft.. it should now look like the attached 'T1-fix.craft'

Now the number decimal places is not fixed, you may only get 4 numbers sometimes, that do-sent matter if you are changing from 5 points to 4 or the other way around.

When placing stacks of fuel tanks, just place the top single ones, edit them, then all the ones below will be at the same hight, same with engines, no point editing them, just make the top item in the stacks the same and everythign that connects directly below will also be the same.

When dealing with large numbers of symmetrical tanks, I have found its easer to use Find-replace to change the numbers, but be warned, if something unrelated happens to be at the very same pos in any of the 3 axis it will be replaced if you forget to have leading and trailing commer marks in both the find and the replace feilds.

Now you can put more tanks and the engines below those three ones.

[sjwt]

Alternatively you can edit your settings.cfg and change VAB_ANGLE_SNAP_INCLUDE_VERTICAL from False to True.

THANKS! I have never been advised of that.. I will try it out right now!!

[sjwt]

Alternatively you can edit your settings.cfg and change VAB_ANGLE_SNAP_INCLUDE_VERTICAL from False to True.

FANTASTIC, I wish someone had of advised me of that earlier, I just though I was shit at placing things

[Capt'n Skunky]

Open up the file 'T1-un.craft' in word pad... <snip>

For the love of Kerbal, do NOT use Wordpad. It will add formatting to the file and fook it all up. ONLY use a plain text editor like Notepad or other equivalent.

Cheers!

Capt\'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[Zephram Kerman]

If you\'d rather not hack files, there is a graphical way to level your engines. Simply move the rocket up or down until the first engine nozzle touches the floor. (You\'ll see the nozzle start to disappear.) Then align all the other nozzles to touch the floor in the same way. If you\'re careful, they will all be exactly level. It\'s a bit tedious, but not so bad as editing the .craft file.

[Doctor Lag]

THANKS! I have never been advised of that.. I will try it out right now!!

This solution is not valid since the best it can do right now is snap to the vertical middle of the part you\'re attaching to, thus limiting your attachment points to 3 per part (I assume this is why it\'s disabled by default)... So unfortunately this is actually worse than the \'just do it carefully noob\' post just before this one...