Hi Guys,

 

Never seen this before in 15 years of editing Afcad files via Lee Swordy's Afcad program and I hope someone can point my nose in the right direction.

 

All Afcad ground scenery for the airport concerned is displayed correctly in my FS9 , that is: Runways, taxiways, aprons, etc. but when in the Afcad program and I press the "Tools" - "Fault Finder" - "Find Faults" buttons, the message "Isolated Segment" appears with the complete network of runway links, hold short positions, taxiway links, apron links and parking positions in yellow. However, everything seems inter-connected in the usual way.

 

I've disassembled the offending AF_XXXX.bgl into XML but cannot seem to find anything out of the ordinary in there.

 

Must be overlooking something somewhere.

 

Ideas anyone ?

 

Thanks in advance.

Hans

its not easy without the AF2_xxxx.bgl,

 

but perhaps you get better error messages with ADE?

I've disassembled the offending AF_XXXX.bgl into XML but cannot seem to find anything out of the ordinary in there.

 

Must be overlooking something somewhere.

 

As has already been mentioned, ADE is a much better choice for working on your airports. Its error reporting is much more detailed and will visually point to the 'error(s)'.

ADE can also find problems that Lee's program can not.

 

If you are decompiling the stock airports to XML, whatever you do, DO NOT recompile them with BGLC and use them! That causes or can cause big problems.

 

Regards,

Mel

http://www.scruffyduck.org.uk/filemanager/navega.php?id=2&PHPSESSID=0fc2b4c2f1b7318cb9aa6fdf09e58b46

is the developer site for the free ADE9X utility along with manuals and tutorials. Here is how to check an afcad type file usually starting with AF2_

 

Start ADE and under the File menu select Open Direct From BGL. Browse to that file and open. Then run the fault finder. There are two types of listings. Errors are fatal and will not be compiled by ADE to a .bgl. Cautions will compile but the result may have non-fatal problems like dead-end or open links.

 

If you wish to correct these problems in ADE for the airport view just do it similar to AFCAD. After testing save first the airport as a project so you can go back and make further corrections. A project has additional code internal to ADE functions for reediting that would be lost in a direct compile to .bgl. After the project is saved and you are satisfied with the fault checking then under File, Compile to BGL using a different label than the AF2_file and locating it ion the correct scenery folder. Then rename the old file AF2_xxxx.bgl to AF2_xxxx.bxx to make it ineffective.

 

ADE is also sensitive to various scenery objects for afcad type file compiled with other airport editing utilities. AFCAD itself will strip these extra objects. ADE should not. Unless it has been corrected ADE will strip the ability to refer to frequencies not included in the AFD type file you are editing unless that file has them already in there. AF2_files normally do have them. To check in ADE, do a List, Comms. If not there you can important them from default airports or other sources or just define what you wish in there. If importing comms from default airports, the list will show all airports in that region's frequencies. Just delete the unwanted comms from that list.

 

I have checked AFX_ files for faults but I've never seen comms listed. I don't know if AFX designers place comms in other .bgl files in their projects. When you compile an ADE file you have the ability to save the ADE produced XML file. In that source code file you'll see a statement like "delete all comm frequencies = TRUE". Edit that to false and then use the XML2BGL compiler from the Utilities library from that scruffyduck site to compile that edited XML file with the modified delete frequency statement to replace the .bgl you just compiled.

 

For AFCAD produced AF2_ files though, the need to modify the ADE code to delete all previous comms will not be necessary since AFCAD221 copies the frequencies into its bgl. I just added this caution.

 

In certain default airports and in AFX or other airport editor produced .bgls you may see additional scenery objects and exclusion rectangles. These will be correctly passed through.

 

Finally, if you wish to add a navaid like a localizer or ILS, ADE will add these to the approach layer in FS as well as the airport view which AFCAD did not do. A default path for ai is created and FS uses them in VFR and IFR conditions. The mods can be seen in the Approach layer view in ADE and various waypoints will show up.

One more caution about using ADE files derived from AFCAD's. Unlike AFCAD, ADE will usually exclude all things not actually included in the ADE file, like taxi signs, waypoints, and approaches (because these are not in the imported AFCAD file). Thus you may end up with an airport without those things. You will need to go to Tools/Import Stock Data and select what you want added back to the airport before compiling the airport.

 

Hope this helps,

Thanks for all your suggestions and help, I will certainly give ADE a try.

 

However, my "isolated segment" problem is definitely not a life threatening issue for my FS9 but just something which I find very strange and have never seen before, I therefore deemed it worth a post in this forum. However, with something like this I'm always very inquisitive as to what could be causing such a very specific and basic linkage problem between the visible Afcad ground scenery and the total network of tracks etc, necessary for AI traffic activity. Furthermore, everthing seems to be technically correct in any XML decompilation listings. There must be a rogue bit somewhere staring me in the face.

 

You guys all seem to be ADE experts while I have almost no experience with this utility which has in fact been growing cobwebs on my machine for years so I will definitely dig it up and give it a go as you propose, just for my own peace of mind. May afterall even become an ADE expert myself !! LOL.

Ronzie, your in depth instructions will definitely get me going and to you Tom and Mel, thanks for your warnings.

 

Hans

I have almost no experience with this utility which has in fact been growing cobwebs on my machine for years

 

Hi Hans,

 

Please use Ron's link to get the most up to date version and get all the related documents. Read over the manual and I think you will find the program is not that difficult. It is just a lot more in-depth than AFCAD. Another benefit; After you 'load stock data' as Tom explained, you will be able to see the taxi signs and default buildings. That gives you the ability to move those pesky signs and buildings that get placed on taxi and runways from time to time (you can drag and drop or delete as you wish). I would also strongly suggest that if you intend to work on a airport file provided by any third party scenery developer that you make a backup of that file first.

 

Mel