SPH symmetry frustration

[Kelderek]

I am trying to add a part to a spaceplane wing using mirror symmetry, but the game is only allowing radial and it's driving me nuts.

I am trying to attach a fuel duct to a jet fuel tank that is part of my wing, I need to start it there and bring it to the central fuselage (fuel flow direction is of utmost importance here). The fuel tank was placed on the wing using mirror symmetry, in fact the whole wing was made with mirror mode. But no matter what I do, the game will only allow for radial symmetry mode to attach a fuel duct to this tank. Is there some trick I am missing here to force the symmetry to change? Hitting "R" does nothing in this case, it just stays on radial mode.

Here's what it looks like:

[Foxster]

I've had similar frustrations. I can place all the parts in radial symmetry and then come to place the landing gear and, no matter what, I cannot place them radially. They insist on going above and below the opposite wings or one will face the front and the other the rear.

It drives me nuts.

[ShadowZone]

I had that problem as well. Apparently if you add something to a part that is not dead center that already had been set to radial symmetry, all "child" parts attached to that part will be radial as well.

If you want mirror symmetry, trace the parts back to the last part with mirror symmetry and then continue from there. It's a hassle, yes. And I think it should not be this way.

[Superfluous J]

You should also be able to take the fuel tanks off and put them back on with mirror symmetry, and then the fuel lines should work. If not, toss those tanks and put 2 new ones on (again with mirror symmetry)

The only thing else I could think is that somehow your no-symmetry-necessary fuselage actually has radial symmetry set, though I don't know how you'd have been able to attach the wings mirrored in that case.

[KerikBalm]

Yes, this is one thing that annoys me about symettry, once you place a part with a certain symetry, all parts attached to it ten must have the same symettry (or none at all).

Ie I can't place something with 6 fold symettry, and then place something with 3 fold symetry on one of those parts (ie, so that half of the first 6 parts have something attached)

I also often encounter bugs if I have an item with child piece placed symetrically on it, and then I detach the parent part and place it again, using symetry.

Sometimes it screws things up.

Also, rarely I will get symetry on just the part I'm attaching, and not its duplicated part...

ie

,

O-O-O

'

Instead of

,

O-O-O

____'

Where O would be tanks, and , / ' would be some part to attach.

[Keras]

I am amazed to finally see someone else with this issue. I had this issue for a while and completely stopped building anything in the SPH. I just can`t build crafts with mirror symmetry because at some point the editor always switches to radial and won`t let me attach the parts with mirror symmetry anymore.

I also made a thread in the support forum when it first happened to me but as usual it was ignored: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/108841-Disable-automatic-radial-mirror-switch

[Kelderek]

I guess I don't understand why the game would start forcing one mode over another at all. I would expect you to be able to try radial or mirror mode anywhere. I don't really know much about the game engine or how the parts are represented in the game code, but this is just really frustrating -- especially if you use one mode repeatedly and all of a sudden the game starts to force a different one. Using one mode of symmetry should not lock in that mode for every other part that you add -- it might default to doing that, but don't force it.

[GoSlash27]

Might be silly of me to mention this, but did you folks know that hitting "shift R" allows you to toggle radial and mirror symmetry?

I stumbled across that the other day.

Best,

-Slashy

*edit*

Derp, Nevermind...

Edited February 6, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Keras]

Might be silly of me to mention this, but did you folks know that hitting "shift R" allows you to toggle radial and mirror symmetry?

I stumbled across that the other day.

Best,

-Slashy

The "R" key alone already does that. For this issue that does not help since the game won`t allow you to change the mode on the affected parts.

What is different when holding shift at the same time?

And just to make things clear I already had the case that I could not place struts in mirror mode on a set of parts where I was 100% sure that I have placed it in mirror mode before. I then tried taking that part off and adding it again with mirror mode enabled but the game still wouldn`t let me place struts on that part in mirror mode.

[GoSlash27]

The "R" key alone already does that. For this issue that does not help since the game won`t allow you to change the mode on the affected parts.

What is different when holding shift at the same time?

And just to make things clear I already had the case that I could not place struts in mirror mode on a set of parts where I was 100% sure that I have placed it in mirror mode before. I then tried taking that part off and adding it again with mirror mode enabled but the game still wouldn`t let me place struts on that part in mirror mode.

Yeah, I realized that when I went back and monkeyed with it. No difference between "R" and "Shift R".

I have no idea why your symmetry would suddenly shift and no idea why it won't let you toggle it back..

If the problem is similar to the tendency in the VAB for parts to assume the symmetry of parts your mouse passes over, you could try holding the Alt key and hit R.

This has never happened to me, so I'm not sure it'd work...

Best,

-Slashy

Edited February 6, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Kelderek]

I've tried alt, shift, to no avail. I suspect that the intakes on the front of my fuel tanks are responsible since I used radial symmetry to add a block of 4 of them to a quad-coupler. Even so, the game should just default to radial in that situation, but still allow me to change it if I want. In any design it seems highly likely that you would want to have mixture of both symmetry types, so locking in only one mode doesn't make sense.

[Keras]

Today I finally found an easy way to reproduce the issue:

http://imgur.com/a/nzWoD

My guess is that the game uses radial symmetry for the cloned parts and completely disregards the symmetry mode that was originally used. I hope you can see how this quickly becomes a problem on more complex designs.