Ok.  I give up.

 

How in the world do you set up exclusion zones in WED.  I have pretty much figured out how to do most of the other stuff, but cannot figure out the "Exclusion Zone" feature.

 

Under file, it says something like "Open DSF" which I think is where you go, but nothing seems to happen.

 

Any help would be appreciated as I have roads and traffic through the small airport I have designed.

 

John

Open up an airport as you normally would in WED for editing...

 

Select the Exclusion Zone tool, and in the toolbar area, select the class of items you wish to exclude... forests, objects, road networks... or a combo of them all. (*That's the step which is usually missed - if no items are selected for exclusion, the zone won't be effective!)

 

Draw in the zone.

 

Voila! Export your scenery pack as you normally would.

 

There's no real need to open or import any other DSF's in the process. Your exclusion zone will handle anything which might be conflicting with your airport.

greggerm,

 

This sounds so easy (I'm at work and can't do it now) but I must have overlooked the Exclusion Zone tool.

 

Is it in the tools which let you draw taxiways, etc.?

 

Hate to sound like a dunce....

 

John

One "quirk" you'll find with exclusion zones is that, unlike just about every other tool in WED, you can only draw rectangular areas, not arbitrary polygons. This means excluding irregular shapes may require many strips of exclusion zones and they won't line up exactly with, say, a road at 45° where you want to exclude houses on one side.

 

I think the explanation I got was that back in the day it was easier for the devs to calculate exclusions within a grid, even if you need to draw dozens of them to get the right shape. They might revisit it in the future, but until then we're stuck with a really inefficient method.

Is it named "Exclusion Zone tool"?  I am sure I searched for that or something similar, but didn't find it...

 

John

John,

 

Look for the big red "X" at the bottom of the toolbar... ya' can't miss it.   (It's called "Exclusions")

 

-Greg

I'm having the a similar issue, not being able to get an airport sit on top of the scenery.

 

I have constructed exclusion zones but still have an issue.

 

The only add on I have is Urban Max extreme II

 

Here are some screens. Note the apron draped over the terrain in a pyramis shape and trees bleeding through.

 

 

 

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

 

These images are from UKLN in the Ukraine.

 

Thanks all

 

Stu

Thanks Greg...  I'll try this soon.

 

John

I wish you well with that, John.

 

I excluded forests, roads and draped polygons in each of my exclusion zones and that got rid of the trees.

 

Now I just need to find out how to flatten the apron area and I'm good to continue.

 

Maybe you know, Gregg?

 

Thanks

 

Stu

Unfortunately there's no way to flatten an area using WED.

If your new airport aprons and taxiways fall outside the "baked in" original border of the airport on the underlying scenery, your only option for flattening is a global one.

First, make sure your new airport has an airport border which encompasses the airfield, aprons, etc... Then turn OFF the "airports follow terrain" option in X-Plane's settings (rendering area?). This will flatten out the land within this and all other airport boundaries. Due to limitations in the XP scenery engine, X-Plane/WED is not currently capable of doing this on an airport-by-airport basis.

More details:
 

The airport border element inside of WED is used at the time the sim is running to define where that flattening will occur, and for nothing else.

The airport border is also used when the underlying base scenery is built. If your airport scenery is in file with Laminar Research when they make the base scenery, the border will define the "baked in" edges and grassy areas for the airfield. This process only occurs when the base scenery is made. This is why when you add in an airport border in WED, you don't see it reflected visually in the sim (*outside of any flattening you might be using). It is only made visual with the grassy textures and blending if it's used as part of the base scenery creation.

I'm a little (a lot) old and it took me a while to find where to select which exclusions to make.  For any of those who share my deficiencies, it is found in the little window just above the area where you add buildings, etc.  When you click the exclusions "X" that window's title changes to exclusions.

 

Thanks Greg.  I haven't had a chance to get there yet as there appears to be a beta update coming down.  Wonder what that is?

 

Thanks to all who have tried to help this old man through this training...

 

John

 

Edit - It's 10.22r2

It's working now.  No roads through my hangars.  Thanks to all.

 

John

Thanks, Greg.

 

Good explanation, runway contour following is now off and problem fixed.

 

Stu

Now ... How do you stop doing airports?  This stuff is habit forming!

Oops, I missed this thread...

 

I had exactly the same problems when I installed a scenery (converted from fs9 I believe) for Lisbon town and airport. The two bridges had roads bellow, and I had to use exclusion (x-clusion :-) ) to mask them. 

 

I came across exactly the same problem - not finding in the menus how to start an exclusion zone and how to choose what I wanted to exclude...

 

Finally found my way around it with the help of someone here from the forum...