Frustration in the VAB

[Lunar Sea]

I have my rover saved as a subassembly but it will not join radially to a side separator on my main vehicle. The rover is basically a mk1 inline cockpit and structural fuselage with wheels that I saved it in a vertical orientation, and the idea is to attach 2 symmetrically to the sides of the main rocket body to separate later.

[FullMetalMachinist]

Subassemblies have to be attached via a node, they can't surface attach. 

Now, once you bring in the subassembly and attach it, I believe you can then detach it and surface attach it to your craft. 

[Lunar Sea]

Ok, pretty sure I tried that, I was at it for like an hour the other night, it would just clip and attach in the middle of the craft. I'll keep at it though. 

[pap1723]

On 5/27/2016 at 4:44 PM, Lunar Sea said:

Ok, pretty sure I tried that, I was at it for like an hour the other night, it would just clip and attach in the middle of the craft. I'll keep at it though. 

It sounds like you need to change the the root part of your Rover. I have run into that issue with ComSats to put onto a launcher. When I had the probe core as the root part they wouldn't attach to the new ship. When I changed the root part to a Decoupler on the bottom of the ship, they attached just fine. Hope that helps. 

[Tiberius K]

Remember you can change the root part of sub-assemblies that are ghosted, i.e. dragged off to the side of the main craft, using the re-root tool

[KerikBalm]

you can? I didn't know that!

Anyway, I agree, first attach it at a node, then reattach it afterwards

[Lunar Sea]

I wound up having to compromise, starting with the rover body first, radially attaching a fuel tank, then building the rest of the ship from that. Also, what's with the Toroidal fuel tank? It seems half the time whenever I try to attach a fresh one to a perfectly appropriate node it stays ghosted