Question about radial size vs diameter of parts

[Chakkoty]

I've looked through posts here on the forum, on Reddit, looked at how several mods interpret the issue...

What does radial size actually mean? I know that a curved panel of radial size big (2.5 m) is going to fit snugly around a 2.5 m fuselage.

But does that mean the RADIUS is 2.5 meters or the DIAMETER?

I know KSP size doesn't directly translate to RL size, but taking the Cupola as an example, it fits 2.5 m closest. In that case, it's diameter. But the Saturn V 1st stage had a diameter of 10m, while the KSP version has 5. 

 

Am I missing something here or is there just no "canon"?

Edited May 16, 2022 by Chakkoty

[OrdinaryKerman]

"Radial size" = nominal diameter, no idea why the developers chose an ambiguous term like that.
In a lot of mods, 'KSP scale' is normally around 0.625x real life parts + adjustment to fit size categories more exactly, but the Cupola is one of the many stock parts that don't fit that scale at all.
 

Edited May 16, 2022 by OrdinaryKerman
why did I put that in?

[Chakkoty]

On 5/16/2022 at 3:38 PM, OrdinaryKerman said:

"Radial size" = nominal diameter, no idea why the developers chose an ambiguous term like that.
In a lot of mods, 'KSP scale' is normally around 0.625x real life parts + adjustment to fit size categories more exactly, but the Cupola is one of the many stock parts that don't fit that scale at all.
Not sure how useful or useless my reply is

It helps a lot, that's what I wanted to know. Thanks!

 

Edit: Specifically this helps me a lot when deciding which parts to use for building RL rockets: 

Quote

'KSP scale' is normally around 0.625x real life parts + adjustment to fit size categories more exactly

Saturn 5 --> 10 meter diameter. 10 * 0.625 = 6.25m, adjusted to 5m diameter. If I wanted to make a Falcon 9 replica, I'd use either the 2.5 or 1.875 size parts (since The F9 has a diameter of 3.6m * 0.625 sits right in the middle between 1.875 and 2.5).

Edited May 18, 2022 by Chakkoty