Space Engineers Experiments: Making Hinge Hatch Doors Work

Finally found time to experiment with hinges to make hinge hatch doors work. Made a few designs that should work in a large scale build. Thanks for watching!
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[@CraigBrideau]

The piston and hinge could let you retract the door once you've opened it so you don't have the open door just hanging out flapping around. Could solve the air-tightness and let you keep the door out of the way when it is not sealed.

[@ianbunch1583]

The merge blocks behave this way because they don't like it when blocks are intersecting their placement boundaries. This is to avoid glitching blocks inside one another when fusing them to the same grid. No exceptions are made for intersections between connected hinges and their hinge parts. Since the Hinge block and the Hinge part block are intersecting, they cannot merge into a single grid. Instead, you need at least sub-grid between the two merge blocks for your hinge to attach to. Edit: Not sure why the rotor→hinge test didn't work though.

[@Kennet0508]

its because the hitbox of the rotor is 2 blocks tall, while the hinge is only 1, wich will make the rotor and hinge part intersect on the 2. block up

[@ianbunch1583]

@@Kennet0508 That makes sense. That's also probably why he had the piston raised by 1 block.

[@Kennet0508]

@@ianbunch1583 no, the reason for raising the piston is due to the piston by default being raised by 0.05 offset (or somthing) so it isn't flush on block 1 You have to raise it 1 block to make it flush.

[@ianbunch1583]

@@Kennet0508 I did some tests. They are precisely flush when the piston is at 2.44m. At this height, blocks can be built from the piston over the grid, or from the grid over the piston without moving the piston. However, The Merge Blocks can connect while the piston is anywhere between 2.44m and 2.52m, so the connection range of the merge blocks is greater than +0.05m. When I have a fully-retracted piston without a head with the region where the head would be intersect with a hinge part on the sub-grid I'm trying to connect to, They won't connect until I remove either the extra piston, or the hinge part. Also, If I just place a block between the piston (not raised) and the hinge, it works. The piston doesn't need to be raised, the hinge part just needs to be 1 block away from the piston so it's not intersecting the placement boundary.

[@ianbunch1583]

@@Kennet0508 When the merge blocks flash red and yellow, it means there is an error, such as intersecting block boundaries, and they cannot connect.

[@ravinrocket3456]

This guy needs more subs

[@TRUPoseidon]

Good breakdown of merge doors. I was completely oblivious to why my doors kept freezing up even with basic piston merge doors. No info online this is the first thing I've seen even if it's a little older. Earned a sub! Thank you!

[@Kennet0508]

all the cases you are displaying here are understandable if you understand the concept that one block cannot exist inside another block on the same grid. Example with 1 hinge: Hinge block and hinge part block would occypy the same space when merged. Example with 1 rotor + 1 hinge: Rotor block is 2 blocks tall, wich would make the Hinge part block occupy the same space as the Rotor block when merged. Example with 1 hinge + 1 rotor: seing as the hinge is only one block tall, neither the rotor block nor the rotor head block will occypy the same space as the hinge when merged, Ergo it works. PS: you can also use 2x hinges on top of eachother wich would probably be the better way to go for your simple designs. as they are only one block tall they would not occupy the same space when merged.

[@PandemicPlayground]

Ahh, I see your point. Good to know.

[@Cr4sHOv3rRiD3]

You can't put single hinge to work because if it merges, the hinge and the hinge part will occupy the same space together, that's the reason why it won't merge :D (rotors and pistons actually have an extra block of space for their parts but hinge itself haven't)(Also that's why we are able to put hinge part on the block opposite of the hinge itself on a one block distance from hinge and attach it.) the best solution is with rotor between or to put the piston and make the hatch move away a little when it detaches and then make a hinge to open the hatch itself later using timers, Just like depressurization effect, I was make one with piston and hinge and works originally like when you open some pressurized door. Also, with those new exhausts parts, you can make an smoke effect as well to fulfill the effect :D Anyway the video itself is very good tutorial and I like it all and I think I gives you some ideas there, keep up the good work there :D

[@Moshthun]

I was about to make a small grid APC with hinge doors, and a pressured interior. This is EXACTLY what I needed.

[@echomande4395]

A decent explanation to a somewhat difficult subject. The important thing to remember with respect to merge block doors (or merge block anythings) is that you cannot have a hinge, rotor or piston connect both ends to the same grid. Merge blocks merge both grids into a single grid so the game engine will not allow a door using just one hinge, rotor or piston to work. Using two hinges, rotors or pistons creates a second subgrid (next to the door) and allows the door to merge. I don't quite know why the hinge-on-rotor door didn't work though maybe the rotor offset was set too big. That way the merge blocks wouldn't be in alignment on contact because the door wouldn't be aligned properly. The rotor-on-hinge door doesn't have such a problem.

[@thorodinson292]

So tldr I have to use 2 hinges for my hi ge hangar?

[@graymouser1]

It's been a year, but I have found a 'solution' recently: If the box/floor your hatch is sealing to is itself a subgrid, you're golden. I made a static foundation, suspended a floor on 4 rotors, and then made doors hinge off the static foundation. They merge/demerged with each other and the floor with just a hinge and no funny business to kludge it. I mean, essentially the whole volume you intend to merge/seal has to be a subgrid separate from where the hinges are anchored.

[@frankyboy1385]

Well I see these design beeing used for many build ideas, like Small Grid missile silo, small grid retractable solar panel, etc.

[@thatrandomguycommenting1261]

The piston hinge combo is what i use to make large doors that can also extend outward incase its close or "sunken" into the main grid. You can do this to make flush doors.

[@nelsonrangel7251]

Thanks for the content bro, great work!

[@Raven5431]

Nice with the piston. After you took off the hinge on the first one I immediately had the same idea. The hinge is off just enough. I used a piston yesterday to extend a hinge out .3m and I can now fold my tailgate on my rover where as I couldn't with just the hinge as the blocks are to close and the gap is now minimal so I can drive another rover over it and walk over it without getting stuck.

[@Asmodeus282664]

Merci pour cette vidéo. .. Elle m'aide à résoudre un problème de construction

[@UfoLBeerSeeker]

To answer most of "for some reason..." - this is working as intended for the most part. The reason why you can't merge with only one hinge is that, it would cause Main Grid to become a Subgrid of itself. That is most likely to prevent memory leaks from grid having endless references to itself, or some physics glitches when grid would try to apply force to subgrid -> itself casing feedback loop (aka Clang). Disabling self-attachment is not most elegant solution here, but i guess Keen don't see it as urgent to mess with something that "works" just to fix something that you can avoid by adding one more block. This is how it is, ask Clang why though. To put it short - to merge any subgrid to main grid, or loop them, you need some intermediate subgrid in between them. It should not matter whether it is hinge, landing gear, connector, rotor or piston (last example with rotor looks like a glitch).

[@metalprime94]

The rotor system might be "heavier" but because the mass of the door is further from the hinge it'll have to work a lot harder to lift it. So, rotor might be the best solution. Plus you can fit more hinges next to each other like that for increased lifting power for super-heavy doors, maybe made primarily of heavy armor or blast door blocks

[@imperialspacemarine1539]

What I would assume the problem could be is that pistons and rotors can be bend and/or pulled into other directions when created phantomforces are strong enough but the hinges cant becaus they are made in a way that they cant exceed 90 degrees in any direction. the problem is the same as any other subgrid: heights of blocks that look the same are different. that means that on a hinge alone the merge blocks are to high to merge directly and the hinges a to firm to move hence they cant merge. bei smallgrid large grid complexes, thing held by landing gears and stuff on pistons its another story because either the height diference is counteracted by the smallgrid connection and the height of smallgrid blocks or minimal piston compression or by moving it in the landing gear because things that are on landing gears can still be moved via phantom forces but only in a small amount. but in tis case its enough for the mergeblocks to actually merge

[@evilrobdog]

Hmm so for a hinge joint to work the two grids you want to merge need a separate subgrade between the hinge and the hatch. With the exception of a piston. Looks like it sees the hinge as a obstruction when merging. Just like you can't merge two slap blocks in the same space.

[@kana6659]

The piston and hinge you could turn the door out of the way if you have a wierd shape like I always do awesome work dude

[@TheBojaboja]

Almost like the merge block wants the grid to be twice removed from the other grid: hinge (sub grid) = bad. piston (sub grid 1) + hinge (sub grid 2) = good. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@jafiwam]

Yup. Two hinges chained together would probably work too.

[@lalopses008]

Maybe. If that were the case, then the Rotor + Hinge should have worked. Its really odd that Hinge + Rotor works, and Piston + Hinge Works.... but Rotor + Hinge does not. It would have been interesting to see if Nik's suggestion of Hinge + Hinge would work. I suspect it might have to do with clang disallowing the merge. Possibly caused by displacement differences? Maybe the Rotor+ Hinge setup does not allow the correct vertical position while the flexibility of the piston does.... idk! Edit: Other folks are saying Hinge + Hinge does also work!

[@nargames]

Wow bro! You cease to amaze me with your amazing content. Your work is so high quality! You should put your vids on reddit for more people to find your work! Thx for the good content!

[@Byson]

Not to be pedantic here, but I hope your meant "You never cease to amaze", as in "You never stop to amaze". ;)

[@BrokeWrench]

​@@Byson i thought the same thing, but you also said "your" instead of "you" and that made me chuckle

[@Byson]

@@BrokeWrench Haha oh no! Note to self: double check for spelling mistakes when correcting someone. :'D

[@Raven5431]

Withe the hinge ontop of rotor adjust the rotor offset to increase the hight a bit like with your piston setup. Actually that makes me wonder now if I can replace my pistons with a rotor on my rovers tailgate.

[@faguolvlv]

was looking for that comment ;p

[@Tiltrotortech]

9:35 - Adjust the rotor height to make it lower.

[@jb6748]

I just discovered this the other day. I realized it won't merge a subgrid with the grid.

[@raggety7017]

FYI not sure if its mentioned but Hinge on Hinge will also merge.

[@cptdfriday1]

Nice work.

[@KennyDead01]

This video is Too damn good !!

[@Len6722]

I made gigantic doors with the rotor on the hinge and, the doors when they are disconnected instantly become station and can't be automatically get to ship status, help me please

[@MythosHB]

Instead of hinge + rotor, you could just use hinge + hinge, the latter does not need to move and is just for having more than one grid when merged. Whereas a rotor and its rotor-part are a liitle bit longer than 1 block, the hinge + hinge-part is exactly 1 block.

[@juleklO]

TL;DL You have to have a secondary grod between the main "hull" and the grid that is the door itself. E.c you can't connect 2 grids with each other when they don't have a middleman to keep them in some way apart all the time.

[@jsmith42690]

Two hinges also work. Hinge to hinge to merge.

[@KerberLeo]

I do it this way

[@MariofanMr]

i cannot get any of the working designs to work, because I think once they merge the hatch becomes part of the 'station', however when unmerging the grid never returns to a ship grid and doesnt move... is there any way to prevent that?

[@Aikagi000]

Science happened here! I have Ideas for my massive hanger gate now. Thank you!

[@PandemicPlayground]

Awesome

[@libni8070]

I made 1 space station near the moon and it is in station mode, whenever I make 1 port like that when they join with the merge it becomes a station too and if I want to open the port I need to go manually and convert the port to ship again, do you know how i can fix this?

[@monsterhunter6400]

I had a double hinge work with merge blocks do idk how this didnt.... was for a deck to lower below blast shields

[@michael-ny3wk]

Please make these in non static grids, so we can see how unstable each design is. The door won't be good on a big ship if it starts making the ship jolt around because of the hinges or rotors interacting in a strange way

[@noxiousvex]

I understand this response is super late, but the issue with this type of test for what you would need would require over 3 Million different output versions to properly test each Design. The Stability of Subgrids is determined by multiple changing factors such as Displacement, Velocity, Angle/Rotation/Extension at the time of the merge. If you test around a bit you can make it perfectly work, this is how we build mechs too with perfect precision. Clang is based on Logic and can be very predictable when you make mistakes just takes a bit of practice.

[@NickPaulsen]

Have you ever thought about making a hangardoor, that gets grinded down when you want to enter, and welded up again after ? Useless.. Probably. But could be pretty cool tho :D

[@ericseidel4940]

LOL, I did exactly the same experiments a month ago.

[@TheFishRDrowning]

attempted every single method here for the past 6 hours and now any time i place a hinge or piston they clang. no fix in sight, no moving parts for me it seems

[@Hadfield15]

Hey, I had a concern regarding the crane you made. Could I get some help? The script is loaded, and everything but the rotor for rotating the crane works. Why isn’t the crane working? Can I please get some help resolving this issue?

[@PandemicPlayground]

Did you name the cockpit for the one that will control it?

[@Hadfield15]

@@PandemicPlayground nevermind, I didn’t build a gyroscope before, lol. Thanks for wanting to help tho!

[@sethramirez7946]

I think it’s better to just use 2 hinges and keep one locked and covered up

[@pagliaccio5082]

you cant merge parent sub grid.

[@deusimpeditioesuritorinull7079]

Can you recommend a half decent server to play in moded I can't find anything remotely resembling decent

[@PandemicPlayground]

Sorry, I've only played solo or with friends and haven't tried a public server.

[@RfLARedBeard]

the problem with hinge doors is that they have to exposed on the outside :L rendering them kinda moot if they take any damage

[@tohpingtiang4878]

Well everything just stick together parmanantly if you put the wrong blocks with merge block XD Just use it as a non air tight area.

[@PandemicPlayground]

That's always an option.

[@PCFuriosBazooka]

Wouldn't the other sloped blocks work? To make a flush surface.

[@PandemicPlayground]

Yes, that would work too

[@Lobster09090]

@@PandemicPlayground it depends on what you mean if 2 block collisions are overlapping when it merges then it won’t work and give you a warning I have tried they have to be treated like full blocks

[@ttvnotabot1199]

First comment ,now to watch the video

[@seasonsbeats5567]

You sure make a ticket on the forums so they can fix this

[@viriatrix9874]

So the ends of a hinge arent subgrids and cant be merged, interesting 🤔

[@KrakenIsMahB]

I´ve already done plenty of experimentation but it seems it was before block collision update. I remember having blocks connected diagonally on the edges if i merged the door the way you did, solution back then was to use smaller blocks that didnt had this behaviour. Anyway, have a look at my creation, maybe it will help you make a cool door yourself steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2192581942

[@pimpslayer9109]

try doin gthe hinge upside down thats what im doin n its fucking insae

[@HellFire178]

you need some tape

[@PandemicPlayground]

Hahaha

[@c9rm3n]

on the one you put the rotor down before the hinge, did you try to adjust the rotor head height?

[@PandemicPlayground]

Yeah, I adjusted it to max, min, and just kept moving it up and down to see if it would stick, but no success. I left it as the block height similar to the piston in the vid.