What is the best way to change the shape of the grass apron of an airport and not lose the taxiway signs and or other objects? Im familiar with Sbuilder. I can successfully remove the default apron and add my own poly for the apron, but I end up having to exclude the trees which show up from underlying landclass. When I do that exclude with SceneGenX I lose everything including taxiway signs. What I'd like to do is actually edit the default apron. Is that possible with any tools at our disposal? Im talking FS9 here.

Does anyone read these forums anymore? :(

Are you familiar with Airport Design Editor?

Does anyone read these forums anymore?

Patience, patience - it has only been a little over an hour ago that you posed the question. Many of us jobs and families to take care of before checking the forums.

I may not be understanding your use of "apron". There are two things in FS9. First, there is a terrain polygon that MS calls an "airport background" that covers the entire area of the airport. This polygon calls a specific texture based on an entry in the file terrain.cfg. The typical one is cool grass, but there are other options, and if one wanted to add an entry to terrain.cfg he could use a custom texture. Besides specifying a texture bmp file for the airport, the polygon will also stop autogen from being placed within it, and will flatten the terrain mesh to a specific altitude. airport backgrounds have a layer priority with respect to other types of terrain vector features which determines when the texture will overlay (or be overlaid on) other features, such as roads and streams.SBuilder is probably the best tool for adding or modifying these airport background polygons. The general approach is to create a terrain exclusion polygon covering the default airport background, and then drawing a new polygon with the desired shape, setting the flatten elevation to match the default, and selecting the desired texture. An alternative, is to load the default airport background file (AB9 file) and edit the default airport background polygon. You still need to exclude the default one with a terrain exclusion. Note that "terrain exclusion" is a different thing from an "object exclusion".Separately, an airport can have defined polygon areas defined as "aprons", which among other things allow aircraft movement without excessive bouncing around (i.e., they are hardened). Aprons when layered will show based on a texture priority that cannot be changed. Aprons take the elevation set in the airport properties. These apron polygons are typically read from the default airport and then edited with AFCAD, SceneGenX or ADE9.In FS9, it is possible that an airport is defined using BGL commands as was done in previous versions. These BGL commands will override the display of aprons from default or AFCAD/SGX/ADE9 created airports. To edit these you would need to first disassemble the .bgl file using a tool such as bglanalyze which will produce code that can be compiled using the SCASM tool. You could possibly use Airport for Windows to edit that code.A possibility exists that scenery objects are created which sit flat on the ground. This is typical in addon scenery where high resolution ground or runway/taxiway/apron textures are desired, or custom markings. If this is done using GMAX and the FS2002 gamepack, it can probably be disassembled with BGLanalyze, but I wouldn't hold out much hope for editing the code. It might be possible to use ModelConvertorX to read it but I still wouldn't have high hopes for editing it. At least I haven't tried.scott s..

So far i have accomplished the following..and this is FS9.....Removed the default grass area with an exclude in Sbuilder and added my own grass polygon. What then results is a grass area as I want, but with trees all over it, even along the runways.If I use Scenegenx to exclude only library objects then it removes the trees, but also all the buildings and taxiway signs go away also. Im interested in one of two things..changing the actual BGl with the airport grass in it, or doing some sort of exclude which I can control what gets removed. I'm not sure why the trees show up as the underlying landclass does not appear to be "forrested".

My problem...

Anyone? Bueller? Someone has to have seen this before...I cant be the only one ;)

What texture are you using for the ground poly?Not all textures will exclude autogen.For your poly properties you have a couple options.One is "assembled". Numbers 1182 through 1200 will exclude autogen houses and vegetation created by the underlying landclass.The other option is "classes". Any of those options that have a "N" in the title will not have autogen.Hope this helps.regards,Joe

Thanks, Ill give that a try..was just using a grass texture as in the tutorial example on Scruffy Ducks site.

normally you would pick something like 1191 from the series in Joe's post. If you pick one of those, and still have problems, check your terrain.cfg. I've never seen anything tweak it, but it should look like this (assume you use 1191):

[Texture.1191] //  Cool Grasses and ShrubsType=1Size=4ExcludeAutogen=1MaskClassMap=2

The key being ExcludeAutogen 1 meaning "true".scott s..

"Assembled" texture did the trick. The basic grass is good for what I need, it changes with the seasons and it excludes the autogen trees etc but not the airport specific stuff.Thank You!!!!!