VAB headache. Unable to have eight-symmetrical octagonal struts?

[THX1138]

I'm trying to place octagonal struts with eight-symmetry but for some reason it's only letting me place one. I can get eight to appear while I'm in the process of placing but as soon as I place the piece the others disappear.

[Anquietas314]

Having just tried to replicate this, I think I understand what you're doing wrong: You can't attach the octagonal strut to a cubic strut edge-to-edge. Indeed, it seems you can't surface-attach the octagonal strut at all.

[battlefieldaces]

You can take the cubestruts already there, place them again with no symmetry. Now attach octo strut and place the resulting assembly with 8x symmetry.

[Anquietas314]

You can take the cubestruts already there, place them again with no symmetry. Now attach octo strut and place the resulting assembly with 8x symmetry.

Hmm, your suggestion just provided the solution: place an octagonal strut somewhere, surface-attach one cubic strut to it, then use the re-root tool to make the cubic strut the root, attach something to it, then make THAT the root, and voila; you have a surface-attached octagonal strut you can then pick up and reattach via the cubic strut (be careful not to separate them though)

As a proof of concept:

Edited December 25, 2014 by armagheddonsgw

[THX1138]

I don't understand what you're saying. I don't understand why I can just put them together like every other piece.

Here's another one that doesn't work. It's clearly bugged.

Edited December 26, 2014 by THX1138

[Anquietas314]

Nope, not bugged dude. For the octo struts it's intended behaviour, if a bit strange; parts in KSP can be both node-attachable (anything with those little balls) or surface-attachable (like radial decouplers and so on). Some parts are node-attachable, but not surface-attachable. The not-rockomax micronode is however a bug and it's known - the 6-way 1.25m hub has the same problem. You can only attach that in certain orientations due to how the vessel trees work in KSP/Unity.

Okay, I'll break the process of attaching octostruts in symmetry down into basic steps:

1: place an octagonal strut in the scene, somewhere, so it's attached properly. i.e. so you can attach other things to it.

2: place ONE cubic strut surface-attached to it (like you attach a radial decoupler)

3: attach any part you like to the node pointing away from the cubic strut you just attached.

4: make that part the root using the re-root tool.

5: remove the cubic strut (ONLY that!) from the ship, but don't delete it.

6. build the rest of your design, keeping the strut + octo piece around (this could technically be done first).

7. now, grab the cubic strut, and attach it in symmetry mode to whatever.

8. Done! (also you should probably set the root part to something sensible at this point)

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

If a part is translucent (as the parts your showing in both screenshots are) then they're not attached to the ship at all. If you were to launch either vessel now, you'd find that those parts are missing.

for most (all?) parts, if they have green nodes showing when you first try to attach them, then you have to match one of those green nodes to an existing one on the vessel (match in terms of position and approximate orientation, you don't have to match the size of green nodes). That's why the parts your showing haven't attached.

If you don't mind sacrificing one of the green nodes (i.e. you're not planning to build both up- and down-wards from the strut) then another alternative to get them attached would be to a) attach the strut's centre to the end of your arms, then use the new rotate and offset tools to realign the strut as you want:

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