TLDR;
I believe the game should give visual feedback of internal components while attempting modifications and repairs outside of the ship designer, the building tool should repair inside-outwards and re-apply bolts and welds, and the game should have an 'update this ship's blueprint' in the ship respawn interface. Details and rationale follows.
My suggestion concerns the inconsistent tools and visual feedback that is provided to players between using the ship designer or while using building tools out in the game-world.
Limitations of building tools
The building tools out in the game world are suitable for making changes to ships irrespective of a blueprint, but they are also the only tools available for any repairs and maintenance - and they feel insufficient for that purpose given the physics constraints imposed there.
For example if you want to access cabling or piping, to gain access you may have to unbolt parts of a ship that can be moved out of the way in the designer, or saved and recreated as modules, but which the game does not allow you to move or put in inventory out in the game world due to weight constraints.
This creates the challenge that reassembly of (a part of) a ship out in the game world may either require you to place bolts in places that are inaccessible and thus require movements of the parts, but once you pull a part off you may not be able to align it back to the place from which it was removed without the snapping interface that the ship designer has.
Attempting to use the building tool to repair requires toggling visibility to work on the inside of a ship, and because it does not reapply bolts and welds the parts may then need to be pulled off the ship for manual reassembly - and the resulting composite object may be impossible to reattach in the original position as a result of the same limitations of weight limits, snapping, and accessibility for placing bolts.
This would be less of a challenge if while out in the game-world there would be clear feedback to the player about where any cabling or piping defects are within a ship, so that they can focus on only essential modifications. It would really help if, with the building tools, you could see through the ship and observe the 'flows' through cabling or piping conduits, and have areas of either damage or separation clearly highlighted.
I can understand when making a repair there can be some challenge involved, but it feels punishing to not provide the player with the visual feedback required to do so in the first place. Currently, someone is more likely to damage a blueprint ship further than to effectively make repairs.
Potential improvements
I can identify two potential methods to alleviate these challenges:
1) Have the building tool's repair beam automatically fill blueprint parts in an inside-outwards manner so that you do not have to adjust blueprint selections to avoid re-creating panels before essential internal parts such as cables and pipes. Have the building tool's repair beam automatically re-apply blueprint welding and bolts of re-created or repaired parts. In functional terms, the repair workflow of blueprint ships would effectively be simplified to pulling off broken sections for scrap and re-'painting' them from the blueprint.
2) Offer an equivalent range of manipulation options between the ship designer and in the game-world. Depending on how a ship blueprint is welded and bolted together this would require allowing moving and storing of both small and large composite objects, and would require granular control over snapping in the game-world.
Given that the second option would imply removing reasonable limits on interaction weight and inventory size in the game-world and that the first option is more intuitive, I suspect the first option would be preferable.
Updating blueprint
Lastly, related to blueprint-aided repairs, when someone makes modifications to a ship in the game world (which I assume to be a common activity), once these modifications are completed to satisfaction the player most likely does not want the building tool's repair function to restore the original blueprint, but to instead restore their newly established baseline instead.
In addition the visual feedback the game gives while showing a ship's blueprint, and the list of broken parts in the building tool's blueprint tab are unwanted noise to the player after modifications are completed to satisfaction.
I can see that someone should not be able to pull an owned ship into the designer mode because it would devalue the efforts of ship creators, but it would be convenient if there is an option to 'update' a ship's blueprint after making modifications to the ship in the game world, for example an 'update this ship's blueprint' checkbox in the ship (re)spawn interface.
I believe the game should give visual feedback of internal components while attempting modifications and repairs outside of the ship designer, the building tool should repair inside-outwards and re-apply bolts and welds, and the game should have an 'update this ship's blueprint' in the ship respawn interface. Details and rationale follows.
My suggestion concerns the inconsistent tools and visual feedback that is provided to players between using the ship designer or while using building tools out in the game-world.
Limitations of building tools
The building tools out in the game world are suitable for making changes to ships irrespective of a blueprint, but they are also the only tools available for any repairs and maintenance - and they feel insufficient for that purpose given the physics constraints imposed there.
For example if you want to access cabling or piping, to gain access you may have to unbolt parts of a ship that can be moved out of the way in the designer, or saved and recreated as modules, but which the game does not allow you to move or put in inventory out in the game world due to weight constraints.
This creates the challenge that reassembly of (a part of) a ship out in the game world may either require you to place bolts in places that are inaccessible and thus require movements of the parts, but once you pull a part off you may not be able to align it back to the place from which it was removed without the snapping interface that the ship designer has.
Attempting to use the building tool to repair requires toggling visibility to work on the inside of a ship, and because it does not reapply bolts and welds the parts may then need to be pulled off the ship for manual reassembly - and the resulting composite object may be impossible to reattach in the original position as a result of the same limitations of weight limits, snapping, and accessibility for placing bolts.
This would be less of a challenge if while out in the game-world there would be clear feedback to the player about where any cabling or piping defects are within a ship, so that they can focus on only essential modifications. It would really help if, with the building tools, you could see through the ship and observe the 'flows' through cabling or piping conduits, and have areas of either damage or separation clearly highlighted.
I can understand when making a repair there can be some challenge involved, but it feels punishing to not provide the player with the visual feedback required to do so in the first place. Currently, someone is more likely to damage a blueprint ship further than to effectively make repairs.
Potential improvements
I can identify two potential methods to alleviate these challenges:
1) Have the building tool's repair beam automatically fill blueprint parts in an inside-outwards manner so that you do not have to adjust blueprint selections to avoid re-creating panels before essential internal parts such as cables and pipes. Have the building tool's repair beam automatically re-apply blueprint welding and bolts of re-created or repaired parts. In functional terms, the repair workflow of blueprint ships would effectively be simplified to pulling off broken sections for scrap and re-'painting' them from the blueprint.
2) Offer an equivalent range of manipulation options between the ship designer and in the game-world. Depending on how a ship blueprint is welded and bolted together this would require allowing moving and storing of both small and large composite objects, and would require granular control over snapping in the game-world.
Given that the second option would imply removing reasonable limits on interaction weight and inventory size in the game-world and that the first option is more intuitive, I suspect the first option would be preferable.
Updating blueprint
Lastly, related to blueprint-aided repairs, when someone makes modifications to a ship in the game world (which I assume to be a common activity), once these modifications are completed to satisfaction the player most likely does not want the building tool's repair function to restore the original blueprint, but to instead restore their newly established baseline instead.
In addition the visual feedback the game gives while showing a ship's blueprint, and the list of broken parts in the building tool's blueprint tab are unwanted noise to the player after modifications are completed to satisfaction.
I can see that someone should not be able to pull an owned ship into the designer mode because it would devalue the efforts of ship creators, but it would be convenient if there is an option to 'update' a ship's blueprint after making modifications to the ship in the game world, for example an 'update this ship's blueprint' checkbox in the ship (re)spawn interface.
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