Construction Grouping

[Metro_Stalker]

I was wondering if there is a away or a mod that allows for grouping of parts when constructing a craft. I know the game does this automatically but that is only done to parts that are attached to a part you are moving, resulting in the disconnection to the main body (ultimately to the command unit) for the parts attached to the part you are moving (Confusing? Yeah, I know ) I am asking if there is away for me to group things together so that if I decide to move it, it all moves. For example, when building a wing I may us multiple parts forward to aft along the fuselage to create a wing. I would like to be able to select a part that makes up the wing so I can move it along the aircraft without having to move each individual part. 

Edited July 31, 2018 by Metro_Stalker
Attempting to clarify my question

[bewing]

Yeah, you can do that in stock to some degree. You can make a wing and then save it as its own vessel. Then use the "Merge" button in the Load Vessel dialog to attach one to the other. You need to be careful which part of the wing is the "root" part. You may need to use the reroot tool to set that.

Alternately, in the "Advanced" construction menu (button in the top left) is a section for "Subassemblies". Which is exactly what you are talking about. You make a wing, drop it in the subassembly zone, and it gets saved. Then when you want a wing, you load the subassembly and stick it on.

 

[Metro_Stalker]

1 minute ago, bewing said:

Yeah, you can do that in stock to some degree. You can make a wing and then save it as its own vessel. Then use the "Merge" button in the Load Vessel dialog to attach one to the other. You need to be careful which part of the wing is the "root" part. You may need to use the reroot tool to set that.

Alternately, in the "Advanced" construction menu (button in the top left) is a section for "Subassemblies". Which is exactly what you are talking about. You make a wing, drop it in the subassembly zone, and it gets saved. Then when you want a wing, you load the subassembly and stick it on.

 

Thank you so much! 

[pincushionman]

Regardless of whether you use merge, subassembly, or build in situ, you may need to re-think how your wings are built. Attaching wing sections to the fuselage ahead of/behind existing wing parts will continue to make “strips” of wing parts like you do now.

If, however, you choose one wing part to be the “wing root”, so to speak, you can build a whole wing like a tree branch, adding more wing parts to existing ones (which may mean parts are put on “sideways”), able to pick it up and move it as a unit as long as you remember which root part to grab.

This will, however, change the distribution of forces within the wing. Instead of a number of wing strips each cantilevered off the fuselage, you’ll now have the entire wing force being beamed through the network of wing parts back to the root, which may introduce deflections and moments that are significantly different than what you’re used to.

In the past, this has required (for large wings) extensive use of struts to re-distribute the forces back to the fuselage components along the entire chord. Someone with better recent plane-building experience will need to weigh in on how autostrut and rigid connection change things (that is, I could be full of … from being out of the plane-building game).