Parts not snapping

[voicey99]

On trying to stack components e.g. fuel tanks, for some reason they now refuse to snap onto the ends of each other and instead insist on being placed at 90°

to each other and without any regard to the clearly labelled snap point in the end of the tank and, on being manually rotated, simply clip through each other, meaning rockets always end up in a zigzag shape. This applies to all fuel tanks, engines (inc. boosters) and any other vertical-snapping-enabled part such as nose cones, adaptors and docking ports; though some items like command units, monoprop tanks and xenon canisters are unaffected. I am new to the game, so it is likely that I just pressed a button (the problem persists after a restart and even a total reset and is not save-specific, and looking in the controls list provides no answers) to change modes-if I did, how do I revert this?

Using v1.1.3 on win8.1 64x with an i5-4460 3.2GHZ and 16gb RAM. This picture shows my attempts at adding a fuel tank on top of one bolted onto one of my existing rockets from when attaching worked.

Edited July 7, 2016 by voicey99
Fixed image

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Hold Alt to enable node snapping when placing a part.

This will disable surface attachment and only allow the part to connect to an open node.

Remember that if you've already attached one end of something to something else that node is "used up" and will be unavailable for future parts.

[voicey99]

That does work, but it still does require some fiddling around to find the the exact position it needs to be in to snap. However, the point is that they should snap onto (open) flat nodes like the end of fuel tanks automatically and from a much greater distance without holding alt (from the hours I have already spent in the VAB).

[Scientia1423]

I had this problem in the VAB/SPH before I knew how to Alt. To fix this without Alt-ing I used to try to make sure the points line up and it's super fiddly. Now I have no problems. I guess we still need surface attachment otherwise it'll be 0.7.3 all over again.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

14 hours ago, voicey99 said:

That does work, but it still does require some fiddling around to find the the exact position it needs to be in to snap. However, the point is that they should snap onto (open) flat nodes like the end of fuel tanks automatically and from a much greater distance without holding alt (from the hours I have already spent in the VAB).

Keep practicing, you'll get the hang of it.

It's all in the wrist.

[Squelch]

What is happening is the parts in the background are setting the mode to surface attach. There are a few techniques available to avoid this.

1. Ensure the part is orientated in the same direction as the part to which you wish to connect.

2. Use the ALT (on windows) modifier to force a node attachment

3. Orient the camera so there are no other parts behind the pointer

Any, or all of these will allow a correct attachment..