Symmetry mode keeps turning on

[mrklaw]

In the VAB, I was playing with fuel crossfeed. I had four liquid fuel boosters around a central fuel tank, and was trying to put two fuel lines simulatenously from one booster tank to the next one. But as soon as I highlighted one of the boosters to place the fuel line, the symmetry mode kept switching automatically to 4x symmetry. Also I couldn't press X to change the symmetry mode while the booster was highlighted.

is this because the boosters were originally placed in 4x symmetry mode? I had to do them one by one in the end, which was doable but would get annoying quickly if I had anything more complex.

Edited May 21, 2015 by mrklaw

[Endersmens]

In the VAB, I was playing with fuel crossfeed. I had four liquid fuel boosters around a central fuel tank, and was trying to put two fuel lines simulatenously from one booster tank to the next one. But as soon as I highlighted one of the boosters to place the fuel line, the symmetry mode kept switching automatically to 4x symmetry. Also I couldn't press X to change the symmetry mode while the booster was highlighted.

is this because the boosters were originally placed in 4x symmetry mode? I had to do them one by one in the end, which was doable but would get annoying quickly if I had anything more complex.

Yeah, KSP doesn't like 2x symmetry on 4x symmetry. I believe it causes a bug and possible crash if you somehow get it working.

[AsterXiphos]

Put the boosters on in pairs (2x symmetry). Then you can put the fuel lines on in pairs as well.

[Geschosskopf]

is this because the boosters were originally placed in 4x symmetry mode? I had to do them one by one in the end, which was doable but would get annoying quickly if I had anything more complex.

Yes. When you add parts with symmetry, any parts that you later add to the first symmetry parts will have their same symmetry by default. The only other option is 1 at a time. So, if you're doing asparagus staging, you add the radial boosters in pairs, not all at once. Otherwise you can't do the fuel lines the way you want.

[Snark]

KSP pretty much insists on consistent symmetry level.

You can put no-symmetry parts on symmetric ones, and you can put N-symmetry parts on N-symmetric ones, but you can't put parts of one symmetry level on parts of a different symmetry level.

This limitation comes up most often when putting together asparagus staging. One way around that is to add the radial boosters in pairs, as suggested above, but I don't like that way myself because it introduces hassles with editing/maintaining them.

The other way is to just turn off symmetry when adding the fuel lines, which is admittedly also a hassle, but I find it much less so than the other option, so that's what I do.

Subassemblies help with some of this pain; I put together a library of various sizes of asparagus for different size payloads, so it's quick to drop one in.