Rover construction - understanding part tree?

[Doozler]

I've just unlocked rover wheels and cubic octagonal struts, and wanted to start making "silly" vehicles (tanks, cars, trains etc). I'm a bit confused about how construction works, especially WRT the Part Tree.

As I understand it, when you attach a part to a vehicle, you are only attaching to ONE "parent" part.

My question is: does this apply to the strength of connections, as well as the "logical structure"? i.e. if I make four pillars and then put a roof on top, then for the purposes of physics, there is only one joint at one of the pillars?

The only additional strength comes from struts, so from a strength point of view, you might as well have one pillar and struts, rather than four pillars and struts? Is that correct?

I suspect that some tutorials will cover this, but can't tell without watching hours of youtube!

Any help much appreciated.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Doozler

[iStickyDuck]

The parts only connect to one parent part but docking ports can be used to help with this

[BLFonsworth]

Building a rover and then attaching it can be tricky, the base structure you get for the orver only connects to other structural parts on the large flat surfaces and cannot connect to the ends/sides, which limits your potential unless you add extra structural parts.. Check out the rovers in this album. I just made these recently..

http://imgur.com/a/BIIuS#0

Edited March 31, 2014 by BLFonsworth

[Sirrobert]

Yes your asumption is correct. There will only be 1 joint connecting the roof to 1 pillar.

You can also indeed use struts to connect the roof to (something else) with more than 1 strut

Aditionally, if your roof (example) consists of 4 pannels, you could attatch each pannel to it's own pillar. The pannels would not be connected to eachother, but they will all be connected to their own pillar

Edited March 31, 2014 by Sirrobert

[Doozler]

Great. Thanks guys! I had another try and the behaviour that had seemed weird and buggy was consistent and understandable.

Also the joints are a lot stronger than I expected - you can joint plates edge to edge fine - so it all was easier than I thought.