USDs are obsolete, so let's agree to fix them!

[Aylad]

Well once we got past the "who do you think you are everyone does it this way" stage I really learned a lot. It's not the first time I've embarrassed myself on the Internet by being ignorant :D and it won't likely be the last, but education is worth a little embarrassment every now and then :D

Thanks to everyone who responded!

 

[Sgtwisky]

Hum. Ive not used a USD, before but I have a few interesting ideas do to this. Just a quick question. Do all USD's have their rails/rail docker facing the same direction when you are facing it? For example when facing the USD the rail would be bottom right and always point left? Just wondering as this will have an affect on a docking prototype I am thinking up.

 

[Valck]

Do all USD's have their rails/rail docker facing the same direction when you are facing it? For example when facing the USD the rail would be bottom right and always point left?

That's the idea, it wouldn't be much of a standard if everybody had them in different places and with different orientations...
Also to be fully compliant, remember to have them at the extreme extents of the bounding box, ie. nothing else should protrude further out. You can make them work with your own ship/station designs if you don't care for that, but it's required for reliable docking between ships and stations by different designers.

 

[lupoCani]

That is... not quite so. Having your docker the farthest out does of course work, but's it's a specific case of a more general principle- any ship that can dock to itself, can dock to any other ship that can dock to itself.Or, more formally-

Defining a "Docking Arm" to be:

• Any straight protrusion with a cross-section of no more than 7*7 meters,
• that is extending past the bounding box of all blocks not part of the protrusion,
• that is used as either end of a docking link.

Then any ship that can

• dock to an identical replica of itself,
• without intersecting any part of the replica's bounding box not created by the docking arm

can dock to any other ship that fulfills the same criteria.

Do note that this includes ships with submerged dockers and extendable docking arms, which is sort of the point. What it doesn't work for is stations, since they can only ever be on one end of the docking, which somewhat reduces the usefulness of this.

 

[Valck]

dock to any other ship that fulfills the same criteria

That's the point.

You are right from a formal geometric definition of compatibility. The USD standard has agreed upon a least common denominator of "at the edge of the overall bounding box", which includes the docking adapter itself, and covers cases such as extending docking arms provided they reach to, or extend over, the edge of the bounding box excluding the docking adapter.

EDIT:
Disregard, agree. ;)

 

[lupoCani]

Alright, I'll... assume you got my point, given your edit.

...

Wait, USD-1? That one was thrown out ages ago in favor of the 2, with the dockers below the door rather than to the sides.

 

[Valck]

Wait, USD-1? That one was thrown out ages ago in favor of the 2, with the dockers below the door rather than to the sides.

Sorry, my bad. I assumed the standard that was eventually agreed upon to be "number one" or simply USD until revision 3...