Recentering a craft in the SPH (and maybe the VAB)

[Wolf Baginski]

I've been working on a large aircraft in the SPH and somehow it has gotten badly off-centre, which has carried through onto the runway.

I may just need a new mouseâ€â€the initial problem may be scroll-wheel misbehaviourâ€â€but there seems to be no way to clear this. All the off-centre data seems to be in the craft file, with nothing that looks like a start-here value.

I have checked the key-bindings.

At the moment some components seem to be outide the space where parts can be clicked on.

I do have a spare mouse-thing, but I need to rummage a bit to find it. Any in-game solutions, or some not-too-horrible file edit?

Edited July 4, 2015 by Wolf Baginski

[Rhomphaia]

Click the offset tool, select the root part and drag it back to the center. The rest of the craft will come with it.

[Gaarst]

Or Shift+Click on any part to move the whole craft.

[Daveroski]

The best way to move your craft in SPH and VAB is to just use two viewpoints for moving it.

When first you enter SPH or VAB call that View 1

Then move your camera angle to one side, as close to the midway between back and front of the SPH/VAB. Call this View 2

View 1 is normally the rear view of your craft and view 2 is normally the side view.

From either view you can move the craft up and down and left and right from that viewpoint. It will also seem to move in and out a little for each view.

Pick a viewpoint and using left-shift/click, click anywhere on the craft to grab it and move it toward the centre of the room Use the shadow of the craft to give you an indication of it's true position in the room.

Move from one viewpoint to the other then move the craft.

For vertical movement, it is better to position the camera at roughly the same height as the craft. Again use view 1 or view 2 to change the height. Again keep an eye on the shadow.

Going back and fourth between viewpoints you should be able to centre the craft in about 4 moves

If you do not use view 1 or view 2 but instead use an angled viewpoint, then your craft will move horizontally according to your viewpoint. Which is why it is better to only use the initial entry window as view 1 and a viewpoint at 90 degrees to it as view 2.

So you use the initial view (View 1) to move the craft left and right and up and down and the SIde view (View 2) to move the craft back and fourth and up and down.

[Claw]

There are a couple options, which I think have been covered above.

Rhomphaia has a good idea, since the offset tool only drags one axis at a time.

If you grab the whole plane and drag it around, also know that the plane on which the craft moves is affected by the camera orientation. So if you want to move it back, then you have to fiddle with the camera to get it looking perpendicular to how you want the craft to move. This can be tricky when the craft gets way off to the side. Often, the best bet is to orient the camera so it's "square" with the walls of the VAB/SPH and move the craft back to the center one axis at a time.

If those don't work out for you, and you are up for a .craft file edit (as you said), then here's another way:

Keep a backup copy of your craft, in case of any problems. Open the .craft file with a plain text editor (like notepad). At the very top, it should look something like this.

ship = Catamaran I
version = 1.0.2
description = 
type = SPH
size = 12.43229,5.496508,22.50211
PART
{
	part = trussPiece3x_4294738042
	partName = Part
[COLOR="#008000"]	pos = 0,10,0
	attPos = 0,0,0
	attPos0 = 0,10,0[/COLOR]

Inside the very first part there is a set of "pos" values. If you set the values to something similar to what you see above, it'll recenter. The second coordinate is the height above the ground, so you'll want something more than 0 there.

Cheers,

~Claw

[Wolf Baginski]

I was fiddling around, and I am not really sure what I did, but suddenly I managed to have the capsule in the centre and was able to get the rest of the plane to hook up to the node...

And pressing Mod to force node attach helps a lot too.

Anyway, there's some good suggestions there, and it's maybe also how I got things in the extreme position.

Once I got the problem sorted, and made the tweaks to the airframe. I did a test flight on the Valentina "bomber". which is mostly inspired by the Handley Page Victor. I probably gave it far too much fuel, but, with enough air, four J-33 "Wheesley" engines give it plausible speed, maxing out at 285m/s with the first signs of transsonic drag. Bigger engines and intakes can get a bit crazy. I may have given it excessive roll control, but with SAS running it was very flyable on manual.

I managed to fly as Mach 0.8 at 26m altitude. I need to trim the weight a bit, take the fuel out of some parts. 80 tonnes is a bit too much, and the service altitude was lower than I wanted as a result. I shall probably take away the outer aileron and give that section a little dihedral.

Most of the fuselage and wings come from the B9 set, currently still in development for v1.0.4

Edited July 5, 2015 by Wolf Baginski
Edit to reduce image filesize

[IamKerbal]

Love that plane so much