Open Source Construction Techniques for Craft Aesthetics

[GusTurbo]

Please do not bring accusations of theft to this thread. The whole point is to share ideas, not to claim them and wall them off. It shouldn't be surprising that some ideas may have independently arisen without any copying involved -- there are a lot of clever people who have made contributions here.

[WooDzor]

^^@Gus. Thank you! I've 'stolen' so much isht (?) from the forum, I don't even know which crafts are my own design anymore:'D.. Not quite true but you get the point. Quite often I get at a point where i want to play KSP but i have no FFing clue what to do. You run into something and you just give something you never thought of doing why not.. It's a game. Enjoy it.

I have been thinking about putting 'is quite good at KSP' on my CV. Please stop stealing my designs

Edited August 3, 2014 by WooDzor

[ScriptKitt3h]

...and someone will soon post the first stock helicopter. Klaws as hinges have been talked about since there are Klaws. And the first thing I saw using a pylon as hinge was in 0.19, I think.

Rune. Just have fun with the game, would you? I hate people calling firsts and "I did this earlier".

This. We don't need petty arguing and people attempting to "own" certain designs, especially ones that could easily be thought up by someone else with a copy of KSP and time to kill.

[andrew123]

Just enjoy the game. I like it when people make crazy vehicles and share them.

[Mareczex333]

I posted openable bay few months ago in Zokesia thread.

I want to end discussion about stealing ideas from other people with this:

*note: check upload date

I was inspired with engines designed by (sorry I forgot) that could change mode between VTOL and Normal, so I wasn't first who used this technique, but is it matter who made it first?

Btw I'm working now on wheels suspension. Vagani cars inspired me to make one, but I will use new technique used in my latest crafts.

Edited August 3, 2014 by Mareczex333

[Vagani]

I posted openable bay few months ago in Zokesia thread.

I want to end discussion about stealing ideas from other people with this:

*note: check upload date

I was inspired with engines designed by (sorry I forgot) that could change mode between VTOL and Normal, so I wasn't first who used this technique, but is it matter who made it first?

Btw I'm working now on wheels suspension. Vagani cars inspired me to make one, but I will use new technique used in my latest crafts.

Cant wait for that, sorry about that taxi loss though, looked real nice as well.

[9t3ndo]

Yeah, but it's not his idea.

it was only my attempt not that i say: "hey look i get something new that dosent exist". i want to share the craft in this thread that people can check out how it works and improve them. maybe in future we get a combination of the claw + landing gear design that bring us a nearly perfect stock cargo bay.

[GusTurbo]

Space Shuttle Payload Bay Tutorial:

Application:

Some additional notes on this technique:

The landing gear pushes on things more easily when they are near the fully-extended wheel. The more suspension compression, the less effective/more jerky it seems to be. Getting the docking ports to line up and function properly is also quite difficult.

Edited August 6, 2014 by GusTurbo

[Majorjim!]

Space Shuttle Payload Bay Tutorial:

Application:

Thanks for this Gus! Great tutorial.

[It'snorocketscience]

Hey guys, maybe we should make a subassemblies mod of all our stuff! Why not?

[Claw]

Oh hey, it's been a while since I posted something in here. But since we're posting cargo bays, here are some images of mine.

The subassembly ends up being about 1.5-1.7 tons depending on which variant you use. In the example below I showed how I built it for a larger cargo bay. I posted a striped down example so hopefully you can see how it fits together. The docking ports keep it nice and snapped shut when it's supposed to be closed. Generally I have to add some ports to the back end of the doors too to hold those still or they flop around.

Cheers,

~Claw

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[Blue]

The spaceplane plus parts once made vanilla should prove indispensable in making reliable and simple cargo bays with a part cost of 1-4 rather than 20-60. Which is great for everyone but sort of makes your guy's designs look dated :V Oh well, such is the venture of OSCTA when higher performance comes out with updates.

Even though I am on a video game hiatus, I expect you all to get your homework done and come up with clever ways to employ the new SP+ parts or integrate them with existing techniques.

[GusTurbo]

The SP+ cargo bay(s?) seem to be only for 1.25m cargo, so there is still a niche for 2.5m cargo bays. Also, I'm not a big fan of their look -- I'd prefer a shuttle style cargo bay rather than the weird flattish Mk2 fuselage shape. I am looking forward to the news parts though -- always good for aesthetics.

[Blue]

The SP+ cargo bay(s?) seem to be only for 1.25m cargo, so there is still a niche for 2.5m cargo bays. Also, I'm not a big fan of their look -- I'd prefer a shuttle style cargo bay rather than the weird flattish Mk2 fuselage shape. I am looking forward to the news parts though -- always good for aesthetics.

Spaceplane Plus was made by Porkjet to improve and supplement the mk2 fuselage. It probably won't be long until the mk3 is improved as well-- though we should all hope that the modification would come with increasing the cross-section size so it can accommodate 2.5m parts inside.

[GusTurbo]

This technique isn't necessarily aesthetic in form, but could lead to some applications with aesthetics in mind. For example, it could be used for a custom launch tower to move Kerbals from the ground to the pod.

I thought about recording some narration explaining this technique, but I'm not a big fan of my recorded voice.

Edited August 25, 2014 by GusTurbo

[astropapi1]

This technique isn't necessarily aesthetic in form, but could lead to some applications with aesthetics in mind. For example, it could be used for a custom launch tower to move Kerbals from the ground to the pod.

I thought about recording some narration explaining this technique, but I'm not a big fan of my recorded voice.

Ah, good ol' glitch exploitation.

I remember using this a while ago when I decided to make a building!

[O-Doc]

I'm a little surprised I haven't really contributed to this thread yet. So, let's remedy that situation.

I've built heaps of heavy lifters. About half a dozen which will eventually make it into my catalogue at least a dozen more failures that I may summon the will to delete from my hard drive at some point. SSTOs are pretty hard to build. Doing heavy lifters is a whole other problem. Designing effective and reliable heavy lifters is yet something else entirely. It's heartbreaking to see a design you've put too many hours into just fail and with SSTOs, there's alot of ways a design can fail.

So, after a few failed attempts that took many, many hours of my time, I realised the basic issue is problem juggling. When designing a plane you are trying to solve a number of problems at once and those solutions must all come together and go into orbit, or crash. So, I designed an engineering process in which I could focus on one problem at a time, solve it, then move onto the next. Each design stage has to logically build on the previous solution and not be dependent on the solution to a problem yet to be solved.

I got motivated for this post because yesterday I built a small cargo SSTO and the process is now so refined that from start to finish it only took about 4 hours to roll out a high quality, reliable lifter. Below is very much the telling of the story of how this described junior heavy lifter was designed, along with the construction process, including techniques, I used to build it.

Disclaimer, images were taken disassembling a craft copy upon completion.

The craft concept: small utility cargo lifter that can do interplanetary hauls when fuel is added to the cargo hold along with light cargo. Requirements are 10 tons to Duna and 5 Tons to Laythe. The design trade offs I took were to spend nearly 10% of its loaded mass on the super structure and with about a third of its orbital mass in TWR with nuke engines. There are some pretty big delta-V performance trade-offs to get the robustness I want out of the design. But, the ease of use factor has proven worth it.

Lets get on with the build.

Step 1: It all starts with the core

Pretty basic. Start with the cockpit and probe core. The hitchhiker can is added for utility(considered internal payload) and a docking port added to it to service the payload. Standard payload goal is 20 tons which is the Rockomax 18. There will be enough capacity to add in a Rockomax 9 for additional fuel. Alternate payload strategies will revolve around a Rockomax 9 for range extension with additional base and rover payloads built around hitchhiker storage units and science laboratories.

It's important to note the girder between the cockpit and the payload. This is very important as both the short and long girders act as a spring. This is a key component in cushioning the craft from it's payload in rough landings, Duna being one of the most common and punishing. Wackjob has done a huge amount of work discovering and describing how strong and flexible girder/strut arrangements are and I won't go into that here at length.

Step 2: Building the cage

This is where I'm investing a massive fraction of my dry mass. The results are worth it. You don't have to build seven ribs, you can get away with three or four and if done right, only one. Obviously, you don't have to build a cage either. There are other styles of plane building but, you don't get the robustness a cage offers.

You'll notice I've strapped the ends of the cage together and added more struts along the spine. This is to prevent the arching of the plane under full load which can wreck take-offs and landings. You'll also note the wing spar on which much of the fuel is going to be mounted.

There's two approaches I take to building the cage. One is to build it with girders and use I-beams for the landing gears. The other way is basically the opposite, to use I-beams for the cage and girders for the landing gear. The first approach is alot more spongy which is good for very heavy, boxy craft. The second is more rigid and works well for craft with a long body or wide wings. Here I'm using an I-beam endo-skeleton purely for aesthetics, mostly because it's a small airframe.

If you design a cage be aware that girders have asymmetrical joint strength. This seems to be a random property of the part which is assigned on physics load. I would say this is how girders get their sponginess so be mindful of your cage layout and strutting using a girder-based approach.

Step 3: Powerplant and fuel complete the endo-skeleton

In this step I arrive at a number which will be around 90% of the mass of the final aircraft. The biggest decision at this step is the required range of internal stores. If I just need to get the thing into low Kerbin orbit then, the fuel tanks will be limited and the added weight will be mostly engines. With this build, I've got the target of Mun and Minmus in mind for the full 20T payload on internal stores and added fuel for Duna and Laythe trips using payload capacity for fuel.

We end up at around 80 tons with 6 turbos being easily enough power to get out of Kerbin atmo. My rough guide is 15 tons per turbo without excessive air-hogging, in this build I ended up with something like six ram intakes per turbo jet. This setup will run 100 tons out of atmo no problem, especially considering the 4 nukes which supply a very sporty vacuum TWR.

The other thing to take note of is the girders for the landing gears. Again, they use that spring principle with is vitally import for the areas that will take the biggest pounding on landing. The girders are attached to the strongest parts of the airframe. I always do this. Attaching this arrangement to fuel tanks is asking for firey landings as fuel tanks are very delicate and won't suffer much abusive before heated complaints. The strutting is also fairly important. The rules are to:

• Strut in physical triangles
  
• Strut across branches of the craft tree, or
  
• Strut upwards through the craft tree
  

Never strut down the craft tree with points of impact. You don't get any (real)value out of doing this.

One final note about strutting. You will most likely be putting wings over, under or covering any fuel tanks hanging off the side of the payload cage. These wings will be strutted to these parts which will add to rigidity and overall structural strength so, bare that in mind least you strut your craft too tightly. The key is for it to be strong but flexible. Not floppy nor brittle. Refining this is the next step.

Step 4: Giving your lifter the beat down

Once the engine and fuel arrangement has been strapped down it's time to test structural integrity. There's two key tests I use plus a third which I will often employ on larger craft.

The first test is to load the craft onto the runway and increase the physics warp. Here you want to look at how quickly the craft collapses under its own weight and which sections of the craft are weakest. I use time warp two to look for any potential breaking points on landing and make sure that the core and landing gear connections are holding up well with a flexible base. One of the things I pay attention to the most is to note how much the craft flexes. Flex is good, you don't want the caft to bounce or shatter on landing. On the other hand, a floppy craft will slap it's wings when it touches down. Keep in mind that off-world landing has added dangers being, uneven terrain giving you less effective wing clearance and, low atmopsheric lift leading to high speed, high energy landings.

I use time warp four to look for potential critical structural weaknesses. As a general rule, if you can time warp at four without any damage to the craft then you can safely assume the craft is not going to rip itself apart when loading from a save or flying through re-entry on time warp.

Once I'm happy with the basic structural quality of the airframe it's on to the drop test. I load the craft onto the runway. Using the debug menu I hack gravity and let the craft rise into the air. Then, unhack gravity and observe how well the landing structure takes the weight of the craft on impact. I like to test higher and higher until I can get unbreakable performance at over 10m/s vertical velocity. It's not enough to do the test once or twice. You need to repeat over and over again in rapid succession so as to generate different drop angles, including some lateral velocity. This is very important as you won't always be landing in ideal conditions. Some last second adjustments are always needed when landing on uneven terrain and/or at night. So, knowing the craft will land well with sideways drift pays big dividends at the business end of flying the thing.

Another important piece of information you can get out of the drop test is to see what angle your craft springs off the runway when gravity is hacked. The higher the pitch angle down, the more weight is being taken by the rear landing gears. This is an early tell for whether or not you have enough landing gears at the back or front. So you can correct this problem at an early stage of the build without having to reshuffle all the parts later on. I personally like to have about 10 te 20 degrees angle before the atmospheric drag kills the rear gear induced somersault. This tells me that I'm keeping most of the weight on the rear where it should be. It also tells me that my craft is going to perform well under different landing angles at my destination after some fuel is burnt on the way. The height you get when hacking gravity will also give you valuable information about how much the landing gear springs are being compressed which translates to how much shock they are going to absorb. Very high "jumps" means the springs are too compressed so add more landing gears.

Sometimes, for larger craft, I will also perform the taxi test. This is to assess the structural integrity of the craft under roll which can come into play if you over-shoot the re-entry and want to make a hypersonic course correction. It can also cover off any weight related issues with take-off. This test is simply just about powering up down the runway and getting to an estimated take-off velocity. Power down and swerve fom side to side to see how much lateral movement the craft experiences. You may roll the craft and that's OK. If it looks like a house of cards you will want to add some cross strutting to improve lateral rigidity. Laterally rigid craft are going to be more responsive in turns than a piece of jelly with wings attached.

Step 5: Doing the plumbing

Once I'm happy with the structural strength and flexibility/rigidity balance of the craft, it's time to wire it up. The first part is to hook up all the fuel lines. How that is done is mostly personal preference and different craft have different tank and engine arrangements. I personally like to have either everything hooked up or the two sides separate. There are exceptions where I have special front ballast tanks that are not connected and require manual transfer at the appropriate time in the mission. I also make sure that cross-feed is switched off in my payload docking ports.

The above image shows a technique for getting your fuel piped around your craft. By adding small fuel tanks in the right locations you can connect lines to them which allows you to pipe fuel around payload bays and other craft infrastructure. Fuel lines always go down before air intakes and wings. Before air intakes so that you know where to put your intakes. Fuel lines and air intakes do not play nicely with one another. I like to make sure fuel lines are well out of the way of my air intake stacks. Wings can be an issue because fuel lines and wings have a special relationship. Wings can occupy the same space as fuel lines but fuel lines cannot occupy the same space as wings. Said another way, fuel lines before wings and you're set. The caveat being, don't let the edge of the wing mesh touch any part of your fuel line or the line end point will pop off. If you need to move fuel lines then just know that some wings are going to have to come off as well to facillitate that change.

One quick note about fuel lines. You can attach fuel lines directly onto cubic struts and they will crossfeed without problem. The reason I like to use these small tanks is because they stick out a bit allowing you to "turn corners". The added bonus is the surface area is large enough for you to make a center connection in the middle of your crafts symmetry.

The second piece of plumbing is the air intakes. You can stack alot of ram air intakes together using one cubic strut and two ram intakes. First place your strut onto a craft surface and rotate. Next, put an intake on the front node and another intake on the rear node of the strut. Now copy from the cubic strut. You'll find that you are basically able to place the copy almost on top of the original. In the image above I have about seven of these subassemblies placed on the small fuel tank which gives me plenty of air. This is possibly the most part and space efficient way to spam ram air intakes without using the debug menu.

Because the focus of placing air intakes is about utillising free cubic strut nodes to keep your part count down, it's also a good time to find some free spaces, or attachment nodes, near the center of gravity for your reaction wheels. I'm not a big fan of using reaction wheels to steer planes in atmo and I do most of my aero testing with them turned off. However, they're great for orbital manuvering and my rule is one reaction wheel per 10(responsive) to 15(sluggish) tons of aircraft.

Step 6: Proof of ascension

So, now the airframe with payload is built, the powerplant and stores are installed, and finally, the resource feeds are all wired up, it's time to go to space today. This step is all about home delivery. You know, bringing it home.

I call this arrangement the flying pizza box. I literally slap long panels of structural wings onto the craft, strut them down, throw some winglet stacks onto the back and put it on the runway. The reason I do this is to make sure the powerplant and resources are not only enough to get to space but, more importantly, do it economically enough to fulfill the design requirements. I'm looking specifically at my delta-V status at low Kerbin orbit to make sure the craft has the payload and range capability I want. If not, the whole thing gets pulled apart and I go back to step 1. I call that the anchovy surprise.

The great thing about the pizza box is that, if you are like me, over half the time designing a large SSTO is spent on getting the wings to fit together. It takes ages. I made the mistake in early builds of doing the wings before getting to orbit only to find out that, while the plane looked nice, it could not do the job. That's wasted time. This technique really does allow me to slap some parts together and test.

Step 7: Dressing your plane up

Once you know you are reliably going into space and beyond, it's time to put some clothes on and go out. Getting the wings to fit together is pretty hard and takes alot of practice. How your plane looks is really up to your sense of aesthetics. This plane, which I've yet to name, follows on from a similar style that my two released heavy lifters follow. You could call this the third in an epic trilogy or cargo SSTO insanity. I do have a couple pointers for doing wings, having done a fair number of heavy lift SSTO wing designs.

Firstly, build your wings out from the centerline, in the same way the pizza box is made. The wings will fit together much easier along the plane-form and the top and bottom(if you are doing two sides) end up alot easier to fit.

Secondly, make sure you stitch the wings to the airframe to prevent wing flexing, which you will see to an absurd degree in the previous step. Wing flexing is an excellent way to lose control authority and by strutting the middle of the wings to the airframe you will see a marked improvement in atmo performance. Be sure to strut your wings to any in/on/under-wing fuel tanks to firm them up and prevent a bad case of ornithoptometry on take-off and landing.

Thirdly, if you do use both top and bottom wings be sure to stitch the wings together where they come together. Also, for larger wings add stitches between each section coming out from the centerline and anywhere else you see flex vulnerability. Below are two images of stitching wings together showing some basic sewing of the top and bottom together from the inside and of the stitch of two centerline panels.

This second shot is taken from inside the wing where you must be to get at the two edges you want to stitch together. You won't be able to go straight from one to another, you can only do this technique in a three of four wing intersection and bind diagonally through a corner wing section. The great thing about this technique is that you can't see this from the outside as the entire strut exists inside the wing.

For cargo planes it's especially important to get a natural pitch up attitude from your lift surfaces. The key technique is to have downward slopping wings at the rear of the craft. The obvious preference is on top of the tail where you will get the most leverage out of that lifting surface. You will want to fly the plane without SAS to ensure you are either maintaining level flight or naturally trimmed up. Many of my lifters take off without SAS or hands on the controls. This pitch up is very important at high altitudes to maintain pitch authority above the prograde marker, thus giving you rate of climb control rather than suffering from that dreaded horizon sniffing.

Following on from the above point, you want to have the CoM/CoL markers in a good spot prior to adding control surfaces. Control surfaces can be a crutch when they appear to add lift to the plane which is all well and good while they are in the neutral position. This is often not the case during periods of heavy cargo hauling through the upper atmosphere. So, don't use control surfaces to move around the CoL or your craft is going to lose major effeciency on ascent.

Step 8: Turning into a plane

Now that the wings are on and bolted down it's time to finish by adding control surfaces to your craft. No doubt your craft is going to lack some of that vital pitch authority. You can fix this by hiding winglets and even large control surfaces into the nose of the craft. They will attach very easily with angular snap off. Add what you need to to the back of the cockpit or anywhere else you feel they need to be. If your craft is still nosing down despite a nice big angled tail section you can rotate your winglets down a touch to increase their lift in the neutral position.

Here's the end result.

Happy lifting and landing!

OK, I'm not done. Here's the technique I use to make perfect 1.25m rocket pods for my craft. They are pixel perfect and if I'm using the three block they drain fuel symmetrically from the outside in so you don't get COM changes if they are placed at the center of your craft. As you may know, placing cubic struts dead center of a 1.25m tank is next to impossible. You can get within a pixel or two but then the strut gets out of position like there's a magnet at the dead center point. Here's how you can reverse cubic magnetism.

The tools you are going to need for the job are:

• 3 x FL-T400 Fuel Tank
  
• 1 x 1.25m rocket(LV-T30, LV-T45, LV-N)
  
• 1 x Cubic Strut
  
• 1 x Circular Intake
  
• 1 x FL-A10 Adapter
  

At all times keep angular snap on and symmetry off.

The first step is to put your fuel tanks back up against each other. You will want to make subbassemblies out of these so do two. The first with the the end tank as your root node and the other with the middle tank as your root node. If you want, you can make more subs using preferred rotations of parts for, your know, aesthetics. I like to keep a sub of just the tank and the cubic strut for my mixing and matching.

The next step is to place the cubic strut on the middle tank on the outward end of the part tree. This means you have to do the usual trick of getting inside the last attached fuel tank to get at the end of the tank you want to attach to.

Next, place your circular intake on the end of the cubic strut, pick up the cubic strut and rotate the two parts 180 degrees. Position it in the center and hold but do not palce.

Rotate the part back 180 degrees and place the strut making sure you don't move your mouse.

Get outside the fuel tank and make sure that the circular intake is perfectly center. When you are happy pull out the intake and discard it.

Almost there. Take your rocket and add it to the end of the cubic strut and rotate to preference.

Finally, put the adapter on the back of the last fuel tank. Doesn't that look neat?

How does it work? I'm speculating here but, I think it's to do with the part meshes interfering with the node points. When you are placing a cubic strut on top of an already used node the meshes collide and the rotation gets messed up. The circular intake seems to have a unique mesh that doesn't collide with the node meaning, you don't get pushed off the center of the fuel tank. That's my theory anyway.

Well that's all from me for now. I'll try to keep track of the techniques I'm using when building and if I don't think you guys are aware of them I'll pop into this thread again. Wow, that was a long post!

[sgt_flyer]

That was a nice read o-doc just a question though - do you have a rule of thumb regarding the number of wing parts needed relatively to weight to get a correct lift - or do you do this by trial & error during the flying pancake phase ?

[O-Doc]

I don't really have any rules except what is going to fit around the cargo bays and their fuel tanks. I like to use double sided wings around 1.25m tanks laid out horizontally so, if I get enough lift to take-off I'm good.

I like to have close to, if not, more than a 1:1 TWR to push up as close to vertical as possible to an altitude where drag is more of a factor than lift. Having a big slopping tail that gets me a large angle above the prograde does more for my lift than lots of wings(stock aero). I have updated this design since to carry a pair of basic jets for rapid climb and have been able to circularise at 100T which gives me the fuel fraction to meet mission requirements. I know some argue with using basics but, I love them for heavy lift as they solve many issues, including low lift in low atmo(not to mention efficient cross range and landing).

Having said that, I did use the pizza box on my Flyingfox to figure out what my lift requirements were and ended up spamming wings to get to that number. I'm more experienced now and focus on wing arrangement rather than wing spam. Hope that helps.

EDIT: I just had a think about that. I would say the final verdict of my lift is in when I can reliably stick a glide landing from 500m with build payload fresh from takeoff in the hills of KSC. That's my quality control at the end of the build. I do mountain landing tests but they are powered and don't give me the same wing loading feedback as my glide landing tests.

Edited August 27, 2014 by O-Doc

[Blue]

Spaceplane Plus was made by Porkjet to improve and supplement the mk2 fuselage. It probably won't be long until the mk3 is improved as well-- though we should all hope that the modification would come with increasing the cross-section size so it can accommodate 2.5m parts inside.

Speak of the devil, some of the modifications and improvements to the Stock-integration of Spaceplane Plus includes supplying Mk3 fuselages.

[GusTurbo]

O-Doc, that was really an excellent guide. It's thorough enough to warrant its own thread, I think.

[astropapi1]

O-Doc, I really enjoyed reading that tutorial. I've always had trouble designing airplane fuselages efficently, or as you call it, "dressing them up"; but your guide gave me an inside look to how you do it.

Were you inspired by This guy? I love his planes too!

[O-Doc]

O-Doc, I really enjoyed reading that tutorial. I've always had trouble designing airplane fuselages efficently, or as you call it, "dressing them up"; but your guide gave me an inside look to how you do it.

Were you inspired by This guy? I love his planes too!

Yeah, I do look at what Overfloater is doing and how he solves problems differently to me. We both started building heavy lifters around the same time starting with KissSh0t's attempt at a heavy lifter and subsequent comment about putting a big red on Duna. We both took apart pa1983's designs to learn more from someone who overcame massive SSTO challenges in the game. So, most of the techniques that me and Overfloater share come directly from pa1983 and his Falcon series. We differ in that Overfloater focuses on delta-V and uses the least amount of parts possible. He uses the wings as part of the structure of the craft so, wings and fuel tanks are load baring parts. My style is to focus on survivability so, my craft start with building a cage first and do all load baring to that. That means my craft are less fuel(and hence part) efficient than Overfloater's.

So, this guide was the consolidation of techniques that I use, some which I've come up with but, most are taken from other community builders.

[O-Doc]

O-Doc, that was really an excellent guide. It's thorough enough to warrant its own thread, I think.

I posted here because I think more people will find it in your thread plus, There's some techniques I've come up with that really should be here anyway.

[Exothermos]

Wow, O-Doc, that was a great read. Pretty much nodded my head all the way through, but the Pizza Box was a surprise! My method at this stage is to spam swept wings, but the idea is the same. I too, have wasted lots of time making something pretty just to find out that it is never going to work the way I want. This is an example:

It was meant to be a dropship that landed vertically on the Mun to deliver space station parts. I spent many hours tweaking the aesthetics and I thought I had it all figured out. I found out that the dV requirements for that mission are just more than the ship can carry internally. Lesson: Make sure the craft can do the mission before spending 20+ hours playing with Aesthetics

Good insights on the relative strengths of parts, too. I'd rep the heck out of you, but I litteraly just did in another thread!