Let's throw away the attachment nodes! (Re-designing how parts are placed).

[Themohawkninja]

Many people have suggested the idea of vertical snapping, and I have once suggested translation offsets, but sometimes snapping is hard if you want to place something right next to node, as the part wants to snap to the node, and not snap vertically. Also, you can't do translation offsets with attachment nodes, only with non-attachment node placed parts. Therefore, I suggest that we throw out this idea, and replace it with a grid overlay for each part.

The grid would be overlaid on each part in such a way that the geometric center of the top (default orientation) of the part would have a intersection on it, with the grid lines being spaced a decimeter apart. For slopes (say for example the aerodynamic tail), the lines are spaced based off of the distance on the surface of the part, so the spaces between lines on the parts are always one decimeter on the X and Y axis. The color of the grid is the opposite color of the part (for ease of seeing).

Connecting parts now becomes a matter of grid snapping and not lining up attachment nodes (makes things less cluttered, and adds what would essentially be dozens to hundreds of attachment nodes per part). Now, when the two grid points snap together, there will be a decent chance that they may not be aligned the way you want them to. So, what you can now do is by using the IJKLHN keys, you can do a translation offset for your XYZ axis. Shift+IJKLHN will offset parts by one centimeter. XYZ snapping just becomes a matter of using the XYZ offset keys to get to the exact point you want. Lastly, the angle snap toggle changes to a grid toggle.

In conclusion, I feel that this will add so much more in the way of neatness, symmetry, and not having parts snap to the wrong attachment nodes, along with being able to attach parts in areas that would be hard to access via the camera (like underwing mounted engines as one example).

[MrKicker]

I second this, this would espechialy make working with thin parts were nodes are close together mutch easyer.

[Themohawkninja]

I second this, this would espechialy make working with thin parts were nodes are close together mutch easyer.

Yep, that would be another example of an advantage that this has.