Grouping Parts

[MR L A]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if it was at all possible to develop a system whereby connected parts could be "grouped" so they were treated as a single part for physics calculations. For example, a command module with 4 rcs thrusters, two parachutes, a docking port, a solar panel, and an antenna could be "grouped" as one part rather than ten individual parts in close proximity.

Obviously, if this was at all possible, the CPU (fps) savings would be pretty huge   

[Red Iron Crown]

There was a mod that did similar, welded selected parts together. Some things it didn't work so well for, but it could increase performance for high part count craft. 

It has side effects though, decreasing the fidelity of the physical simulation and Unity doesn't particularly like joints between parts of highly disparate mass (this is why the 3.75m decoupler is a physicsless part). 

I'm not sure this is a good fit for a stock feature, it would require some automated method of choosing which parts to weld, and I'm sure that method would have a ton of edge cases that are tricky to handle well.