Displaying the dimensions of blocks

If I'm reading it correctly, the lheight/lwidth/ldepth (and small equivalents) of the Itembox template are meant to represent the up/down, left/right and forward/backward dimensions of an object, respectively (from the point of view of an Engineer placing the block).

Within the *.sbc files, it seems the game devs subscribe to the y-is-up mentality (however dumb I think that is), so it makes sense that height/width/depth would map to Y/X/Z. Display in that order is a bit weird, so it SHOULD be lwidth/lheight/ldepth and swidth/sheight/sdepth to allow transfer of x/y/z a bit more smoothly.

However, I can't seem to figure out where the itembox template is defining what order those variables are displayed. I tried editing the order of the listed variables in both Template:Itembox and Antenna to no effect, and I'm at a loss of where else to look. For an example, you can see the dimensions in the Antenna article; under what I think makes sense it should display as 1 x 6 x 2 (actually what I think makes sense is 1 x 2 x 6 but that doesn't agree with the game's data, and I won't muck about with something that has an established nomenclature), but it instead has 6 x 1 x 2.

Any thoughts on where to look to fix this?

 

Itembox is a very complex piece of work.

Its a layered template but the display is handled by componentbox.

6x1x2 1x6x2 etc are all equivalent, and you have to remember that there is no up in space, so any dimension can be considered up. I think originally I was working with just the raw sbc files and listed them in order.

Also once you apply any sort of rotation in the game, it remembers it, so in that way there is no 'default' placement either.

 

While you are correct that there is no up in space, I have yet to see a station or a ship that did not have an up, and it is to stations and ships that blocks are attached.

In addition, blocks themselves usually have a local up, such as the antenna; even if the block is placed sideways from the Engineer's perspective the antenna still has an up measured in its own local space, and it is this up I wish to communicate. Also, when starting a new session there is at least some default rotation; we can at least attempt to be consistent in what we communicate to the reader rather than each article be different.

EDIT: thanks for the direction to componentbox. I'll check it out.

 

As an option, we could change it from displaying width/height/depth and put it as X/Y/Z to keep it completely objective. These values could also be taken directly from the game files, simplifying things further.