Center of Gravity

[Spectre32]

Ok If you had a complex object, like a jet engine and what to rig a crane correctly to pick it up, what would be a good procedure on how to go about this? Lets say you had access to the engineering drawings and such, and could thus get approate weights for subsystems(turbine, bypas fans, etc etc) for proper calculations.

[Cyrus]

You never pick up an object through its center of mass. Always through several hard points on the structure where it can handle the load.

But to answer your question, assume basic shapes and just balance the moments.

[greytomato]

it's a good idea to lift the object through a point which is above the center of mass. if you lift it from a point not exactly above it, the object would move and try to find a new point of center mass.