joint stiffness

[nli2work]

I've got Joint Reinforcement installed; .24.2; the stack nodes on my parts still seems very wobbly. Is there anything I can do config or model wise to make them less springy? I read a few times that the attach node size affects joint strength; but from experimenting it doesn't appear to make a noticeable difference.

[Justin Kerbice]

AFAIK: nothing (config/model wise).

but using strut connectors help in such case, and without knowing what is your precise issue, it's hard to be specific.

One thing to experiment (funny): put a fuel tank in the center, attach some (4, 6, 8) girders on its surface, attach small fuel tanks on the girders surface.

On launch, even with (because of ? Never tried without I think) KJR, you'll get a "spontaneous destruction".

This happen in fact every time you have some kind of: [ heavy part - light part - heavy part ] constrution.

With strut connectors between the center FT and all the other, + between the FT and struts, to be sure, no such destruction happen. Weird unity thing I guess.

[nli2work]

okay.. so node size does seem to affect joint stiffness, not much, but I'll take it hwere I can get it.... now is there something I can do to make the green spheres smaller? where I have the most problem with joint stiffness are small parts, which gets hidden by the larger node spheres. aside from RCS Build Aid, I don't know any other mods that lets you scale the indicator spheres.

[somnambulist]

okay.. so node size does seem to affect joint stiffness, not much, but I'll take it hwere I can get it.... now is there something I can do to make the green spheres smaller? where I have the most problem with joint stiffness are small parts, which gets hidden by the larger node spheres. aside from RCS Build Aid, I don't know any other mods that lets you scale the indicator spheres.

Starwaster has a plugin in the works that resizes nodes on the fly -- small in the vab, as big as they need to be in simulation. He mentions it in Sumghai's SDHI thread but I can't seem to find it elsewhere on the forums.

[ferram4]

Node sizes don't affect stiffness when KJR is installed, because relying on part modders to set the correct node sizes in the wake of 0.23.5 proved unwise; many mods still don't set nodes to the correct size, causing lots of fun issues. Instead, KJR changes joint strength with the size of the mesh based on a plane that is normal to the "forward" direction of the attach node.

There's not much that can be done to fix wobble now though; the newer PartJoint system seems much more protective of the properties of joints, so I can't change things as much as I would like or even be sure that what I'm changing is having an effect. Further, struts (which previously held everything rock solid) were given a ton of play post-0.23.5, so they're no longer as useful.

[nli2work]

Node sizes don't affect stiffness when KJR is installed, because relying on part modders to set the correct node sizes in the wake of 0.23.5 proved unwise; many mods still don't set nodes to the correct size, causing lots of fun issues. Instead, KJR changes joint strength with the size of the mesh based on a plane that is normal to the "forward" direction of the attach node.

There's not much that can be done to fix wobble now though; the newer PartJoint system seems much more protective of the properties of joints, so I can't change things as much as I would like or even be sure that what I'm changing is having an effect. Further, struts (which previously held everything rock solid) were given a ton of play post-0.23.5, so they're no longer as useful.

Thanks for the insight. I can modify the model to improve the stiffness a bit in this case, not by much as the attachment area is pretty small, but every bit helps.