Link two ships in VAB

[Irvin]

Hi,

I have a dumb question, I've built several ships for my jool5 attempt and now I'd like to load two of them at the same time in the VAB in order to link them with a docking port. However the subassembly drop zone does not allow to store a full ship with its control pod as far as I can tell.

Is there any trick to achieve this ? Or do I have to disassemble one of my ships in order to use the subassembly drop zone without the control pod ?

Thanks

Edited April 15, 2016 by Irvin
Typo in title

[RaelonMasters]

34 minutes ago, Irvin said:

Hi,

I have a dumb question, I've built several ships for my jool5 attempt and now I'd like to load two of them at the same time in the VAB in order to link them with a docking port. However the subassembly drop zone does not allow to store a full ship with its control pod as far as I can tell.

Is there any trick to achieve this ? Or do I have to disassemble one of my ships in order to use the subassembly drop zone without the control pod ?

Thanks

The best way that i have found to do this is to change the root part to the docking port you are going to use to attach the craft together, then pull the craft off of the port, which you can do quickly by entering the appropriate mode with the number 4 key.

Once that is done save the craft as a sub assembly.

[KocLobster]

17 minutes ago, RaelonMasters said:

The best way that i have found to do this is to change the root part to the docking port you are going to use to attach the craft together, then pull the craft off of the port, which you can do quickly by entering the appropriate mode with the number 4 key.

Once that is done save the craft as a sub assembly.

+1

You can also load the other craft with the Merge button on the load craft screen.

[RaelonMasters]

1 minute ago, KocLobster said:

+1

You can also load the other craft with the Merge button on the load craft screen.

I hadn't thought about that +1

[KocLobster]

4 minutes ago, RaelonMasters said:

I hadn't thought about that +1

I generally use the option you described too, it was the first thing I thought of as well.

[Irvin]

Many thanks to you all !!!

See you soon (?) in mission report !

[RaelonMasters]

5 minutes ago, Irvin said:

Many thanks to you all !!!

See you soon (?) in mission report !

Glad to help, good luck and look forward to the report!

[Plusck]

Just in case you haven't discovered it yet (took me a while...) - pressing shift while clicking on a floating group of parts will hive off part of the group wherever you clicked.

This is fabulously useful when using the merge option for a ship without an exposed root part.

[Hodari]

You should be able to save it as a subassembly.  Just make sure you set the docking port or whichever part you want to attach it by as the root part first.

Or the other option is to build both ships separately and save them as normal ships.  Then load the first one.  Click the load button again(hit don't saveif needed), select your second ship, and hit MERGE.