How does one go about making everything level? Example, I have one central mainsail engine, and I want 3 more radial engines, with their exhausts level with the mainsail. Is there some kind of snap-to for this?
I got so fed up with this problem in 0.13 that I made a little external script to go into the .craft file and (with a little guesswork and a little guidance) automatically what I'd heretofore been doing manually. (But my script is tuned to my own build-style, and is in Perl, so probably not much use to you.)
If things haven't changed too much for 0.18 savefiles, that's what I would suggest. Here's what I used to do: Open the "foo.craft" file in notepad, identify a central fuel-tank from which radial decouplers branch onto counterparts that has (say) a <x>,<y>,<z> location of <x>,4.50424,<z> and then see if you've got (say) three radial fuel-tanks sitting at <differentxs>,4.412945,<differentzs> (i.e. similar, but not identical, vertical positions) and edit that middle value to be the same as the original middle value. For all fuel tanks/engines directly below these initially branching ones, cross-compare with the equivalent "central stack" item and adjust accordingly.
This
must be done only with like-for-like components in both central and radial positions. I find that getting a layer of radially-attached stacks (that mirror the equivalent stack(s) that they centrally attach to) in position before I start adding in fuel/strut interconnects and SAS modules that sit on top of the side-stacks that don't have counterparts in the central one(s). If you then want to add a second layer of radials, then you are advised to do this in a second pass. I've done this up to four times, in the past.
But, anyway, when happy (or for each stage in a complex multi-pass refining) save the file as "fooX.craft", then back in KSP load the "fooX" model. As you didn't change the "model name" entry at the top of the Ship file, it will still be named as "foo" and if it loads nicely you can just resave it over the original "foo.craft". If it doesn't like the load, or it doesn't look right to you for some reason, just don't save the fooX (named "foo") and re-open the "foo", either in KSP or notepad, and do what you need to do to work out what the issues might be and what (up to and including trying the editing process again) you can do.
I've sometimes found editing the .craft file is even good for
properly organising the staging groups (I find that complex ones were often difficult to control in the Assembly Building interface). No idea if this is still the case, and of course now there's the Action Groups to consider as well.
Of course, there's probably some 3rd-party applications (either in-line to KSP or external like my own script) been made that sorts a lot of this out for you. And are
properly tuned to (at least) 0.17 savefile formats. But as I'm a bit behind the times on versions I can't help you there.
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