[0.41 Suggestion]

Ship designer

Would it be possible to add the ability to "invert" ship parts? Say you want to build your own hangar deck. Currently you have to build around the empty space that makes up the deck and make sure everything lines up nicely. What if you instead could just build the outline of your ship and then place a part where you want your hangar deck and that part would carve out space from the ship. Placing a small, square block on the side of a massive hull and adjusting it so it was flush with the edge would then give the impression of hangar deck. Is that at all possible or would it require to much processor power to render properly?

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Gilmoy

Join Date 12/2009

+41

i.e. you want a Constructive Solid Geometry tree that includes regularized set difference operators

GC3 ship design is currently an additive-only solid(?) modeler (N.B. not a surface modeler), i.e. a CSG tree with only union nodes. Since Boolean union is associative, order is irrelevant, and the "tree" collapses to a flat list (actually, an unordered sequence).

Machinists have had the inverse problem forever, i.e. they make protrusions by applying material-removal operations to the space around it. Hence the gee-whiz nature of today's 3D printers.

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I take it that's a no then.

It's a shame IMO. I really do not like the ship designer. I get that it makes it much easier to make something, but it's severely limiting the ability to make something specific. At least for me. I would much prefer an actual 3D designer where I could alter every shape instead of having to attach blocks to predefined hardpoints.

Of course, you could still have the predefined blocks to make it easier but just having to create the outline of the ship - as opposed to building it from the inside out - would make more sense to me.

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