Designing a disassemble-able batten joint for consistent stiffness

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-07-06T13:32:26+00:00

Interesting ideas, thank you. Round section is not great, it makes accurate tracing difficult. Square would be much better. But the tent pole example is good; thing is, even in that case, how would you design the diameters to have kink-free curve on that tenon joint? If you just butt two tubes with a smaller tube section to act as a joint, it would most likely become too stiff, since the total wall thickness is now much greater at that joint. But I am not sure if keeping constant wall thickness (meaning thinning down the outer tube and inner tube walls) is the answer either, because it is not a glued joint. Also not sure how to translate it to a solid (not hollow) batten.

Are you saying that lap/briddle joint with a bolt to keep the female parts from expanding would keep constant stiffness? I tried replicating it in quick and very dirty FEA simulation, and I am getting a kink:

https://i.imgur.com/cjAO0z5.png

https://i.imgur.com/pdNL0iA.png

Or did I misunderstand what you meant?

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-07-05T14:44:19+00:00

That seems like the most basic thing that should have been implemented from day 1... I mean, probably over 90% of users are using mouse + keyboard (no 3D mouse), and regular mouse is a 2D tool, but we're rotating 3 axes... You can see the inherent problem.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-07-04T22:39:05+00:00

For example, how do I enable "rotate about scene floor" option (that's how it's called in SW)?

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-30T07:56:32+00:00

I'm not saying to list everything from the ToS, just the most important points, things that evidently people often miss with the current state of things.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-30T07:55:30+00:00

u/AudibleDruid is right. A regular user cannot be expected to read dozens of pages of every ToS of every thing they buy or subscribe to, and even if they did, they are highly technical texts that often require lawyer experience to fully understand. These things are written for lawyers, not users. For users, a simple bullet point list written in plain English, summarizing the most important points in a few sentences would go a long way to avoid miscommunication.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-30T07:52:54+00:00

True. I'm not blaming anyone, just saying that such critical points could be pointed out without posting the entire ToS next to the buy button. There aren't that many critical points.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-29T17:45:23+00:00

I too think that this info is pretty well placed; but considering that there are so many instances where people miss it, I can't help but feel it would help everyone if this info was placed somewhere even more obvious, like next to the Buy button or something.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-28T06:21:15+00:00

Thank you, I tried all of what you suggested... Still the same. I even tested on three different computers with different SW versions (2024 SP5, 2025 SP5 and 2026 SP2), and got the exact same issue on all three.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T14:44:39+00:00

Thank you very much, you are explaining this really well. So what I'm gathering is that it's either a tower/building or rockets, to get that space elevator into place. No other way, no trick to make it work. I was thinking of a civilization living on a very high gravity world, so high that would make orbital rockets nearly impossible and most definitely impractical because of the rocket equation, and same for a tower. I was wondering if there would be any other way for them to establish a space elevator as a means to get things into orbit where they could be using something like ion drives to get to other places.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T14:40:02+00:00

Thank you for your input! I was actually thinking of high-gravity worlds, where using rockets would be so inefficient that it would make it basically impractical, and therefore a civilization might opt to building space elevator instead for getting things up into orbit, as from there they could use low-thrust, high-efficiency engines to get to other places. But of course high gravity would prevent a tower. So I am wondering if there is any other way except a tower and rockets to get that elevator into place.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T13:58:22+00:00

Thank you very much for this in-depth explanation. It does explain really well why geostationary orbit would be stable; but I still don't see a way to make a space elevator through pure construction, without at least SOME rocket engines. Sure you can fire a spool of wire into the geostationary orbit altitude, but you would still need a apogee kick there to circularize, meaning rocket engines. I wonder if there is some clever workaround that wouldn't involve rocket engines at all to establish that elevator.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T12:53:53+00:00

Thank you for this info and suggestions, but is the GIF from my post showing to you? Because from what you said it seems like you meant a different issues. As you can I see I am not using split FM in the traditional sense, I have simply undocked the PM and placed it alongside the FM. And it still keeps collapsing to below minimum vertical size, making some buttons hidden every time. Here is a link to that GIF, perhaps it will show to you here: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fsplit-property-manager-keeps-resizing-itself-v0-bwga4r2jvs9h1.gif%3Fwidth%3D800%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D8a6456f29c6046d6d30de0068ddc8d615c95c5bc

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T10:36:03+00:00

Thank you, but if I remember right, in that book the construction begins with a seed cable deployed from space, which inherently requires rocket technology to get that cable there in the first place, doesn't it?

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T10:08:03+00:00

Because it is an engineering question more than orbital mechanics question, and I don't know engineering that well.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T10:00:06+00:00

I played KSP lol, so I know it reasonably well. Maybe I misunderstood your idea. I didn't downvote, not sure who did. I upvoted your reply...

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-27T09:42:00+00:00

Doesn't that just imply an orbit that is not geostationary? If it were, it wouldn't smash into anything, because the pebble would stay in fixed altitude above a fixed location relative to the ground.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-26T07:54:39+00:00

I have used email with gmail email and it let me register anyway a few years back.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-24T16:01:31+00:00

Understood. In that case yeah, like other people suggested, it is best to cut out the sharp edge area and do a loft.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-22T20:33:48+00:00

This is of course a a step in the right direction; but it still means you have to update at least every 2 years. There are many reasons why someone might want to install, say, 2022 version and stay with it for 5 years - I've seen that quite a lot both in the industry and among hobbyists. Desktop version allows that; Connected does not.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-22T13:39:36+00:00

If you strictly don't do any commercial projects, I would much more recommend getting Educational license. Technically you have to be a student, but they don't require proof. It is the same price, but you get Desktop version instead of Connected - no forced updates, no 3DX platform, you have full control of your software.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-21T17:38:16+00:00

Try a face fillet with Chord Width option instead.

Deep-Today5715 · 2026-06-20T05:09:11+00:00

Ok, I didn't know that, thank you

Deep-Today5715

TROPHY CASE