Angled coupling in SPACE! Howto?

[Vaquinha]

So I'm building a sci-fi looking space station/ship. (Not quite sure where I'm going with this little project, I'm just taking a break from career mode.)

I'm well underway to how I want the ship to look, however I've run into a problem with some structural connections I want to make to increase the ships strength under acceleration. See attached image.

Please tell me there's a way to fix this. I've had no trouble attaching multiple docks with the same orientation, it's just that this corner bit is not docking on both docks...

[SSSPutnik]

The lengths OK? Ie there's no gap?

All I can suggest is orient the docked to craft so its an exact heading of say 0, 90, 180 etc and then use mechjeb or similar to ensure the docking orientation angle is also correct angle.

Looks tricky, but great looking 2001ish station!

[Vaquinha]

Thanks for the reply Sputnik, Yeah, the lengths are equal, or as close as one can possibly get. I've tried with a "sidebar" that's an inch longer, and an inch shorter, however every time one of the docks magnetizes, connects, and docks before the other one makes contact.

I'll keep trying with different sized parts, but it doesn't seem to want to cooperate =) If anyone else has any other pointers, I'd love to take them into account in my trial-and-error days.

[-ELF-]

If I recall correctly, when docking was only implementing, this issue raised.

What is actually going on is:

You come with your last piece, try to dock and one of sides magnetizes and docks.

Second side from this moment is accounted as a part of this very ship, and will not magnetize as long as the ship cannot dock to itself, even if two docking clamps get in contact with each other.

what you want to do, is make a contact with both sides simultaneously, to engage magnetizing for both sides for these parts to be accounted as different ships.

Making long sentence short, dock both sides with one try, do not allow one side to attach before second.

Second solution is installing KAS (Kerbal Attachment System)

It will enable you to move parts around, and you can surface-mount a wrench wire on one side, a clamp on the other, attach one to another and tug everything together, but be careful with tension forces, they can cause rotation and/or vibration, wobbling and accidental destruction of station, universe and everything.

[Mystique]

;867169']Second solution is installing KAS (Kerbal Attachment System)

It will enable you to move parts around' date=' and you can surface-mount a wrench wire on one side, a clamp on the other, attach one to another and tug everything together, but be careful with tension forces, they can cause rotation and/or vibration, wobbling and accidental destruction of station, universe and everything.[/quote']

Best solution is to use 1 docking port and as much KAS adjustable struts as needed, if you ask me

[Vaquinha]

Thank you all for the responses.

Moving in at a 45 degree angle and hitting both docking ports simultaneously is proving too much for me. Seeing how I'm trying to keep my Kerbal as vanilla as possible I'm going to go ahead and re-do the nose section. Send it up in space with the two small corner bits already attached so that I can dock three ports with the same orientation.

Thanks again for brainstorming with me

[federicoaa]

Second KAS struts. Also, it's fun to do EVA to put the struts in position

[lantay77]

Second KAS struts. Also, it's fun to do EVA to put the struts in position

KAS pipes work well also, they seem stronger than the struts from my expierence.

Edit: Also, if your station gets very large and parts seem to spontaneously explode, try installing kerbal joint reinforcement. This happened to me with my 1000~ part station.

Edited December 25, 2013 by lantay77

[Flying Wolf]

Hello guys! First post, here, so, please, be forgiving and bear with me!

I post in this thread because I'm having a problem very similar to Vaquinha's. I built a station in LKO and, just at the very end of the assembly, the last part, an arm with three hubs, doesn't connect completely to the rest of the structure. Here's some pictures to help you understand:

I moved the arm in using the central docking ports as reference ("control from here" with the port on the hub and "set as target" with the port on the science lab), but the result was that the right hub didn't dock to the hitchhiker pod. It looks like the docking ports aren't perfectly aligned, probably because while in orbit I moved the station to position it so that the solar panels could have the best exposure; problem is, it wobbled a lot and that probably caused a misalignment, as it wobbled while I performed the docking manouevre, despite keeping the speed really low. I tried to undock and redock the parts in various ways, but nothing seems to work. So, given that I don't want to have to redo the whole thing from the beginning, or spending an eternity reassembling it in space, I'm asking you: is there a way to edit the vessel in the persistent.cfg file to realign the docking ports? Or any other solution, of course, that can help me finish the station assembly.