I plan on making a tutorial for Hydraulics. Not to flame the guy, but the one out there is lacking and there are errors in his explanation. I'm going to prepare some things and make sure i'm 100% confident in what i'm putting out.

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For the mean time, the best resource I found is the truck Timotei did, search workshop for: Thomas Nacelle Replica

I love the authors work, but the example he has uploaded has an error.

You need to treat the section that goes from the Joint(or Pivot) to the Head of the actuator as Normal 2, not Tangent 2!
It has taken me HOURS of research to dissect this. Put his test crane at a 90 degree angle and look at the position on the Programmable block. Notice the position called out seems really odd, because it is.. Switch the data of Tangent 2 and Normal 2, take another look.

Thanks for your hard work, not pointing fingers, everyone makes mistakes. Figured i'd spare the next guy the amount of time it took me to figure this simple error out.

nvm the hydraulic is fine, the solid should be (0,0,10), not (10,0,0)

hi @Timotei, i found a little mistake: H1's Tanget2 & Normal2 are twisted.
It's only noticable if OriMode = 0 and going e.g. forward/"W"
Great script (& clean code), many thanks to you!

Well that took forever but I finally figured it out. I understand pistons now. What I failed to understand is the script treats the hydraulic as though Normal1 and Normal2 are colinear at angle 0. Once I realized that it got a lot easier to figure out what was going on lol.

X is always forward, you always define your rotors so that the arm following is in the X direction for the script. Think of this whole thing as 'just' a rotor and maybe how the arm should look if it was completely extended forward.
If you still have problems, post your definition in the Help discussion on the mod page.

Something confusing me about hydraulics. How is the grid post-hydraulic oriented? I'm guessing that the X axis is assumed to be in line with the top half of the hydraulic hinge based on the example, and that it starts counting from the last free pivot? But the landing gear truck I'm trying to build is having some VERY strange behavior that I'm having trouble figuring out.

Nvm, I figured it out (Measure solids to the pivot point, if i'm not wrong).

I'm a little confused, not because of the example (which seems simple enough) but as to how actuators will fit into a larger more complex arm. Do I need to specify solids up to the center of the free rotors that hold the actuator pistons, or up to the center of the pivot point? So if I have a Z rotor, and 3 blocks above this is the free rotors that hold the actuator pistons (on a Y axis), and tangent 3 normal 1 is the pivot point, would I need to specify Solid 0,0,3 before the hydraulic (up to the base of the pistons) or would I need to specify Solid -1, 0,6 before the hydraulic (up to the base of the pivot point)?

To set a specific control seat it's really just a TAG, so then all seats with that TAG in the name somewhere are able to control the arm if you mean that.
However the line
"var MyController = new UserControl( Arm: MyArm );"
meas that the UserControl is given to the Arm defined as MyArm, which just means that it becomes controllable.
The line before defines the arm called MyArm as H1+S1.

Did that help you?

i waas reading the setup and im a bit lost on setting a control seat. is it just rename ing the seat of choice to NAME then in the script have it as "var MyController = new UserControl( Arm: NAME );"?

If that isn't an option for you, you can try to define two seperate hydraulics in this t fashion:
r r
||\\ //||
|| r || view from top/bottom
||// \\||
r r
r stands for a rotor and the outer two || would be the actuators working in oposition of each other.
If you define it on the y axis (and x obviously) you can have it behave like steering if you set the reference frame to relative (i think).
Again though, i wouldn't recommend it and it would also involve your vehicle scraping along the floor when using it...

i would => i wouldn't

I would recommend using it that way, you probably need to tweak it a lot to get it right (guessing).
Also, do you need to use hydraulics specifically or can you do with a measly rotor junction (would have the benefit of being able to disconnect)?

so how does one set it for articulated steering? ^_^ https://orig00.deviantart.net/fb86/f/2009/239/b/f/8x8_articulated_tractor_by_ac710n87.png

@jackik1410 no, because for MArmOS, having 4 Solids or 1 is the same if there is no rotation joints in between.

wouldn't it be 4 solids on the actuator? my brain is leaving me right now...

Big thanks!

Thank You!