Ship Designer - What am I doing wrong?

[Overlord Byron]

I've just completed work on a roughly 5k part ship in the ship designer. I've selected everything and used the welding and auto bolt feature, but my ship is showing over 1600 unattached parts.

I thought it was an issue with the bolts, but if I go into test mode I've got beams (which were supposed to be welded) breaking apart for some reason.

I've searched the forums, but may have missed something. Could anyone offer help (other than "just build in space") as to what the issue is and how to resolve it?

 

[MCwrath]

I've just completed work on a roughly 5k part ship in the ship designer. I've selected everything and used the welding and auto bolt feature, but my ship is showing over 1600 unattached parts.

I thought it was an issue with the bolts, but if I go into test mode I've got beams (which were supposed to be welded) breaking apart for some reason.

I've searched the forums, but may have missed something. Could anyone offer help (other than "just build in space") as to what the issue is and how to resolve it?

Starting with the 'obvious' things; the beams are all connected to at least 2 other beams? And have you tried selecting parts of your ship and welding all the different parts? The same for bolting?

The autobolting tool doesnt work perfectly, often times you still have to bolt yourself even after the tool.

Last thing you could try (save before trying); copy the whole ship, delete it completely, paste it again, and try all the welding and bolting again. Sometimes this fixes glitches.

 

[Mur]

My big guess would be that you don't have enough beams to connect the parts. You will def need to go around and bolt parts manually and that can be helped by locking and hiding certain parts (like plates, machine and devices)

 

[Womble]

If you use the durability tool (6 by default) in the designer, any "loose" bits of frame should be highlighted by little boxes. Can be easier to find all of these in the "stress" (RMB) view than trying to peer through a pervasisve green glow to find a tiny, fine-lined box. Click the boxes to see what they're highlighting. You should have several boxes for the lowest Warp Class Parts on the ship, probably have some that say a part will break if a collision occurs near it. You might have boxes showing beams that aren't attached to two other beams, boxes to show where Parts need more bolts.

 

[Overlord Byron]

Mur nailed the issue. I misunderstood the bolting mechanism in the game, and was trying to make curves using a 96 cm grid. I now understand that those little 24 cm triangles are useless without beams right next to each other. Thank you all for the suggestions and help. 😎