Part generator Version 2.X release / open beta

[FortyCaliber]

I have another question:

For a 250 cm cylinder, the base volume (h = 1cm) is 49087.5 cm^3

If I add 10 L of fuel and 12.22 Liters of oxidizer (22.22 total, 222220 cm^3), the total volume of the tank becomes (147262.5) but the additional volume should make it only 71307.5. What accounts for the discrepancy of 75955 cm^3??

[rosenkranz]

KSP liquid units (L) seem to be equal to 5 liters.

[Eric S]

What is the formula you use to calculate mass for empty tanks?

KSP fuel tanks don't correspond to reality very well. With very few exceptions, all the liquid fuel tanks have a dry mass that's a fixed percentage of the mass of the fuel they carry. 12.5%. An FL-T200 tank carries 1t of fuel, so its dry mass is 0.125t. A jumbo 64 carries 32t of fuel, so its dry mass is 4t. Linear scaling.

You can argue that that's not right, but if you balance against stock parts, that's how it scales.

[FortyCaliber]

This is actually very helpful; I was not aware of the 12.5% rule. I figured the rule was linear and not geometric with an increase in volume, but I never thought to look at the stock parts. I can now accurately model the mass of the tank with a given fuel volume.

To be clear: If the given fuel-Ox mass is "X" then the tank dry mass will be "X*.125?" Does the addition of mono-propellant affect this?

I want to be able to automatically calculate fuel necessity for staging using a simple Excel spreadsheet so I can create custom components quickly for deployment into simple, efficient vessels.

I attempted a IRL balancing of the parts back in 0.16... it throws the game off until you factor in a standard reduction in volume to fit the game... but then I decided, "why bother with *real* if I'm going to just change it."

[Eric S]

To be clear: If the given fuel-Ox mass is "X" then the tank dry mass will be "X*.125?" Does the addition of mono-propellant affect this?

Mono-propellant tanks don't follow this rule, and I'm not sure how they scale. The 2.5m tank has a dry mass of about 13% of the fuel mass, but both of the other tanks have much higher percentages, in the 37-47% range. I suspect that these tanks are scaling their mass on their surface area, but even that doesn't quite line up, though it's close.

[Lando]

Q: How does the calculation work?

a) the volume is calculated by V = PI * R² *X where X is a scaling factor becouse a Lieter in KSP doesn't need as much space as a real Lieter and thats one reason why real rockets have a larger diameter than 1.25m while for KSP 1.25m is just fine.

Things like Batterys and RTG will add a to the volume

b)the dry mass is scaled linear to the volume (volume*Y). I know, this is unrealistic, but thats how stock parts work ATM

Things like Batterys and RTG will add to the dry mass

c)the mass of the filled tank is the drymass + (the dencity of the resource * Liters of that resource)

the dencity is taken out of the resources.cfg

PM me if you want the exact formula I use ATM

(I may change the current X factor (haha X factor XD) as they turn out a litle to short atm and becouse of that I will have to change Y,too)

Will there be an engines version?

I don't know... I don't feel like there is a lag of engines in the stock parts aqnd there are tonnes of mod engines out there.

I don't go for large diameter rockets, but I know there is a lag of 10m engines for example.

I will add a cluster option, so you can add multiple smaler engines to your big tanks. (this is not a NO for an engines version)

Edited May 30, 2013 by Lando

[Rusk]

Thanks a bunch for this awesome tool.

Would it be possible to generate adapter parts with this as well? Lets take a decoupler as an example that could receive a 3.5m part on one side and decouple a 2.5m part on the other side. I hope this makes sense.

EDIT: Looks like you already have sort of an adapter function in your tool. I am not sure how to employ it though.

What would "1 to .25" exactly mean? Is it a literal adapter from 1m to .25m or is it a ratio as in 4:1 ?

Edited May 30, 2013 by Rusk

[Lando]

Thanks a bunch for this awesome tool.

Would it be possible to generate adapter parts with this as well? Lets take a decoupler as an example that could receive a 3.5m part on one side and decouple a 2.5m part on the other side. I hope this makes sense.

EDIT: Looks like you already have sort of an adapter function in your tool. I am not sure how to employ it though.

What would "1 to .25" exactly mean? Is it a literal adapter from 1m to .25m or is it a ratio as in 4:1 ?

if you take the 1 to 0.25 at a Diameter of X you get a X to X/4 Adapter.

You can add a decoupler Option to both Ends (maybe you should disable xfeed for decouplers, as they don't xfeed in stock)

[rkman]

The "shifted cone" is perfect for lateral engine mounting (engine clustering).

A few comments and suggestions:

The number of vertices (sides) of cylinders seems to be quite a bit higher than stock cylinder-like shapes (tanks, engines etc). I think vertex count of the generated parts can be reduced without much loss of visual quality.

Generated parts that utilize smooth shading suffer from incorrect shading, a well known undesired effect that (at least in Blender) requires fiddling with cutting of edges and flat/smooth shading of vertices to fix it.

I'd suggest using flat shading for all parts (as is the case with e.g. the clean cylinder and the shifted cone) until you figure out how to fix smooth shading of the generated model.dae's.

Textures are all very shiny/glossy, i tried fixing it by fiddling with the texture png's, to no avail.

Edited May 31, 2013 by rkman

[Rusk]

Kinda figured that for myself. Now what would be cool if you could make the actual diameters for both sides dynamic as in the user can choose those. That would be fantastic because this way I could produce adapters for literally every part as long as the basic shape is supported and is the same on both sides.

[Lando]

The number of vertices (sides) of cylinders seems to be quite a bit higher than stock cylinder-like shapes (tanks, engines etc). I think vertex count of the generated parts can be reduced without much loss of visual quality.

Well, depends on the diameter you are creating the parts at. I think vertex count is fine, as some stock tanks and other parts have decorations wich increase there vertex count.

Maybe the vertex count of the collider is a bit high, but most users should have no problems

Textures are all very shiny/glossy, i tried fixing it by fiddling with the texture png's, to no avail.

you can try to open the 1.dat file with an text editor and change the

specPower = 0.1

rimFalloff = 3

values

EDIT: by editing the 1.dat you can include custom cfg file modules, too. But please read the terms of use!

Edited June 2, 2013 by Lando

[tek_604]

I seem to be having a really odd problem. I made a 3.75 hexa part with a height of 950 and it fell through the ground when it loaded. Then I tried again with a 10m wide part and it did the same thing. I'm not sure why this is happening. Further 'testing' shows that the part is solid against other parts, but passes through the ground at the launchpad. I downloaded whatever version was available about an hour ago.

EDIT: It also is solid against the pipes and things laying around the launch pad

Just like to say, I'm having this problem on cube parts also. If its at the bottom, the spacecraft falls through the Launchpad.

Also, when hovering over the parts, I'm not getting the green glow that you'd normally get on parts when hovering over.

I'm assuming these two problems could be related due to the lack of meshes?

[Countrykris]

I found a problem. I just made a new tank a cylinder (Clean) and when in VAB you can't tell if it is connected to another part radially. It dos not turn form red to green when trying to attach to something, in fact it has no color change at even from first placing the part. Here is a pic to show what I mean.

The tank on the left is connected with a radial decoupler but the tank on right is not connected at all. As you can see there is no way to tell if it is truly connected.

[Lando]

I found a problem. I just made a new tank a cylinder (Clean) and when in VAB you can't tell if it is connected to another part radially. It dos not turn form red to green when trying to attach to something, in fact it has no color change at even from first placing the part. Here is a pic to show what I mean.

The tank on the left is connected with a radial decoupler but the tank on right is not connected at all. As you can see there is no way to tell if it is truly connected.

Just like to say, I'm having this problem on cube parts also. If its at the bottom, the spacecraft falls through the Launchpad.

Also, when hovering over the parts, I'm not getting the green glow that you'd normally get on parts when hovering over.

I'm assuming these two problems could be related due to the lack of meshes?

I know about that problems, but I don't know how to fix this...

And I'm still very busy :-(

[Tommygun]

I think the problem is with the core game and the Devs may need to fix it or tell the mod makers how to change there items to work better with the launch pad.

[Sun]

I need an adapter for 3.75m to Rockomax size. Unfortunately, that's not an option with the part generator. I really need an adapter...

[Rusk]

Thats why I asked the author to provide an option where you can chose the 'ratios' of the attaching sides freely. I am hoping for a positive answer here.

[Psycho529]

This isn't really working for me at all... the parts don't have a .cfg file and don't load up in the game.

[tek_604]

This isn't really working for me at all... the parts don't have a .cfg file and don't load up in the game.

It works perfectly... If you're generating parts for use with pre-0.19. Obviously, as we're producing parts for use with 0.20, you'll need to modify the part.cfg for each part, to add:

PART
{
// part stuff
} // end part

(in case anyone else sees this, you'll need to do the same thing for the fairing factory parts, I just tested it).

The only thing that bothers me, is the lack of a green glow when you hover over a part. Makes selection difficult. But, I've noticed the fairing factory parts also have this issue. At first, I thought it was the lack of a mesh, but now I'm pretty sure it has something to do with linking with KSP/Unity.

*sigh* Actually, what I just said with linking is probably also false. If anyone knows how to make a part glow green for selection purposes, please let me know. I'm thinking it needs to go through Unity, using PartTools, but, I can't find any set of easy instructions to do this, and frankly, the Unity interface sucks.

Edited June 9, 2013 by tek_604
Edited because I wanted to sigh.

[mic_e]

Hi, have you considered putting this awesome tool on Github or some other source-code hosting platform? That way, you'd get an awesome bug-tracker, and people could even send you code for additional features/bugfixes/...

[Lando]

Hi, have you considered putting this awesome tool on Github or some other source-code hosting platform? That way, you'd get an awesome bug-tracker, and people could even send you code for additional features/bugfixes/...

Yes, I will make this open source, but since my code is very ugly, I will make a video to help you get into the code.

I was realy busy trying to fix that green glow in the VAB, without success :-(

And I am still busy working for the university :-(

[Kerbal01]

Do you need to have part generator to use parts generated by part generator?

[Rusk]

Just in the very unlikely case that I am wrong I shall say that you probably don't need it.

[TheCardinal]

You don't need it.

[drtedastro]

Great stuff Lando. Many thanks for this mod.