Subassembly Pipes and Struts Flailing About When Pulled from Subassembly Menu

[inigma]

As a subassembly designer (see http://kerbalx.com/inigma/STS-Operations-Module) I develop a number of cargo based subassemblies that require pipes or struts connected to specifics parts of the cargo bay.

See my most famous sub: http://kerbalx.com/inigma/STS-Service-Module

The sub is using many struts to hold it in place. Sometimes when you grab this sub from the sub menu, the struts are all flailed out of place, and attaching the sub never fixes the flailing struts as they connect to whatever.

What I found as a workaround however, and perhaps maybe a clue to the bug, is that when I change orientation prior to grabbing the sub, say when I move the camera to look to the north of the VAB, rather than looking East, the subassembly is able to be pulled out of the sub menu with struts and pipes intact, and I can then pan my camera around and rotate the sub without issue and place it in the cargo bay with all struts in their proper place and orientation.

I'm beginning to think this is a subassembly-on-save-orientation issue. I save my subs facing South in the SPH, and load them in the VAB facing North. This seems to solve most of the issues whenever I pull a sub in VAB facing East as shown here, and the struts are flailing, however sometimes I have to face West or even South to grab a sub if a sub is being finicky and not calming the strut flailing down as not always facing North in VAB fixes it. I'll post a vid showing this effect to this thread when I get a chance.

Anyone else experience this? Anyone else find that simply changing your orientation prior to pulling a flailing sub tends to fix it - but only when pulling from a specific N,S,E, or West VAB or SPH orientation?

This happens in plain vanilla unmodded, and modded installs. The Ops Module first linked above is unmodded and the issue can be duplicated with it. Sometimes simply restarting KSP fixes the issue entirely and I don't have to try the re-orientation method to pull a sub with calmed down struts.

Edited June 16, 2015 by inigma

[katateochi]

What I found as a workaround however, and perhaps maybe a clue to the bug, is that when I change orientation prior to grabbing the sub, say when I move the camera to look to the north of the VAB, rather than looking East, the subassembly is able to be pulled out of the sub menu with struts and pipes intact, and I can then pan my camera around and rotate the sub without issue and place it in the cargo bay with all struts in their proper place and orientation.

Oh, that is interesting. I will try that when I next get a chance to KSP. Yesterday I pulled out a subassembly and I thought I'd just summoned the FSM; struts and fuel lines all over the place and quite a lot needed replacing after connecting the sub.

So is the basic idea that when picking up a sub I need to be facing ~180 degrees from the direction I was facing when I saved it? or would just changing orientation to some arbitrary point just prior to picking it up do? Can't say I'm ever mindful of what orientation I'm in when saving or picking them up so who knows what dir my current ones were saved from. I've got a number of subs that come out with struts/pipes all over the place so I shall try picking them up at different camera angles and see if that changes anything.