Building circular stuff in the VAB

[3mon]

Still fiddling with it in orbit back and forth, the rendezvous is way harder than i expectd... I keep running out fuel because this non-symetric monstrosity points to where it wants and is veeery difficult to control lol Should have strapped a bigger rocket too, im up for my 3rd orbit refuel, and i have only matched planes with the station.

Still it makes up for some pretty pictures

[The mun]

I took an interest in ring / wheel / disk things too. Been having such a hard time, and learned a lot from this thread already! Keep it coming. I never thought of building rings without using symmetry, and sure enough, they often exploded on the launchpad.

Welded parts mod does indeed help, although its not yet perfect. If your welded part has a lot of nodes, sometimes it won't attach to anything. So one of my parts I had to manually edit out the extra nodes. (That wasn't so bad as it might sound.) For your inspiration, here are some ring things I made using Welded Parts mod:

Unfortunately, none of them are stable enough to fly. Perhaps they're just too big? I haven't figured out the problem yet. That disk actually is stable. My problem with that one is I want to make it into a wing, and launch it space plane style. Not likely to work.

how good is it at rolling just asking out of curiosity

[Stone Blue]

Still fiddling with it in orbit back and forth, the rendezvous is way harder than i expectd... I keep running out fuel because this non-symetric monstrosity points to where it wants and is veeery difficult to control lol Should have strapped a bigger rocket too, im up for my 3rd orbit refuel, and i have only matched planes with the station.

Still it makes up for some pretty pictures

Looks good, but what is the parts count on that thing?

[3mon]

648 with what's left of the launcher

EDIT: Omg nearing the station @ 2 fps this is gonna be fun

EDIT2: SUCCESS!!! :D Now i can sleep in peace heh

Edited December 7, 2013 by 3mon

[Zephram Kerman]

how good is it at rolling just asking out of curiosity

The Ker Ball rolls very nicely. Every time I tried to launch it, actually. The boosters would explode, and it would get about as much altitude as falling off the side of the launch pad. Then it would roll perfectly all the way to the water.

648 with what's left of the launcher

EDIT: Omg nearing the station @ 2 fps this is gonna be fun

That right there is the main reason folks turn to Welded Parts.

[Taki117]

So, I've been looking at all these circular things, and I'm curious, how the hell do you actually get it to curve? I've tried building a simple ring in the VAB and I just can't get it.

[3mon]

Well, i basically built something like this in the VAB (im at the office so i have no access to pics, so excuse my lame schematics )

|--O

Seen from above, that's basically a fuel tank in the middle, with an arm made of 2 of the long girders, and one of the large structural panels at the end. Then, for the curving effect, you have to use shift+ rotate to stick another 2 structural panels to the first one, in this way (i used shift+rotate 2 times in each panel to reach the desired angle):

/

|--O

\

Then it's only a matter of taking that one arm you just built arm and alt+click to copy it, with angle snap on, all around the central fuel tank NOT using symmetry. If you angled the panels correctly, they should slightly clip into each other (no cheat menu clipping needed) and form a 'curve' of sorts to make your ring.

The problem i had with the build, hence this thread, was that i built the first arm, then used 8x symmetry to copy it around the fuel tank. And again to cover the gaps. That seemed to cause some kind of weird problem in the VAB editor, rendering the buttons useless and going crazy with part placement. Even when i randomly managed to hit 'Launch', it went crazy in the launch plattform, losing random parts and exploding... So i was pointed here the problem might be the symmetry, something to do with parent and child parts, and they were right. After that i could finish the wheel just fine.

Hope i managed to explain myself, when im out of the office i can provide some pics if needed

[Taki117]

That's great for panels, I was more concerned with the Hitchhikers, All I can get them to do is snap flat on the end. (With or without angle snap)