Hello, after a long hiatus, I decided to fly to Portland after freshly installing Portland 2010. Before taking a flight, I slewed around to check things out, and all seemed ok.  Looked nice too.

Next up was an edit to the afcad file "Portland_KPDX_ADE9_PH" (located in the main Portland folders scenery folder) to tweak a couple of radius  parameters to match my personal values for certain planes. The issue: whether I make one edit or many, after I save the afcad file and get into the sim, default airport scenery mixes in with the addon airport scenery. 

When in AFCAD and selecting KPDX, it only displays the default and addon file, and I am always selecting and editing the addon file that came with the scenery.  I've tried renaming the file, moving it from the Portland folder to the addon scenery folder with same results, and I can't seem to figure why I can't successfully edit the file included in the download.

I thank you all ahead of time for any suggestions and info you provide.

Best, 

Neil

 

Hi Neil,

Since this looks like an ADE file, it should not be edited in AFCAD. Use ADE for that. Afcad strips out things. Try editing in ADE and let me know if that works.

Best Regards,,

Jimmy

Thanks Jimmy, I never ran into this challenge, so rather new to me. I will look for ADE and try your advice. I'll reply back by Monday with my results. Have a great weekend!

Neil

Sounds good Neil. If you're having trouble, you can find it at https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/ade-downloads-page.459372/. I actually had trouble finding it myself for a minute. And you also have a good weekend, got my fishing in this morning, so now just some beers and baseball.

Best regards,

Jimmy

This is why I don't understand why anybody uses AFCAD any more. AFCAD goes back years and does not understand features that have been discovered since. In this instance, it is clearly exclude boxes that are getting destroyed during a save.

ADE requires a bit of a mindset change to understand and use but does the job very well. If you want something that looks and feels more like AFCAD, get a few coins out from your wallet and buy AFX. The latter will also warn you if you try and save a file with unknown features (rare!) and instruct how to circumnavigate the issue.

If there was a button I could press that would uninstall AFCAD from everybody in the world's PCs, the number of threads across a range of forums would be reduced! 🙂

Psssst! Don't tell anybody, but another way to resolve qballbandit's issue would be to save the modified file on a different scenery layer to load after the original. Any special features only in the original would still work.

. . . and please don't now mention the urban myth about multiple A&FD files.

John

John, thanks. I have not been into modification for some time, and have simply been enjoying the mods I worked on years back. I appreciate your feedback, and I get it.

 

What I don't get is, "save the modified file on a different scenery layer to load after the original. Any special features only in the original would still work.".  I am certain I don't understand. The modified file would be the Portland_KPDX_ADE9_PH, yes?

 

Jimmy, been fishing between storms here too (Chicago area). I will check out the link you provided, thank you! :) 

Neil

4 hours ago, qballbandit said:

I am certain I don't understand. The modified file would be the Portland_KPDX_ADE9_PH, yes?

The actual file name isn't critical (although it is snesible to follow a convention for your own ease of identification) - as long as the file has a .bgl suffix and is in a valid scenery directory, Flight Simulator will recognise it and act upon it.

John

I agree, AFCAD is a little outdated in this day and age, but AFCAD doesn't "destroy" anything ... it simply only edits the "AIRPORT" tag within the more extensive scenery file created by ADE, SceneGenX etc., which may well have included buildings, excludes, flattens, statics etc., none of which are part of the AIRPORT tag.

If the edited file generated by AFCAD is placed in an active scenery folder ABOVE the original scenery in the Scenery Library, the replacement airport will become the active airport, all the other scenery details in the original file will remain active because AFCAD doesn't generate any EXCLUDES, however, if the AIRPORT outputted by AFCAD has been edited to a different elevation, then the other scenery elements may well appear to be "floating" or "sunken", at which point a more comprehensive editing solution will be necessary. Similarly, if aprons have been redrawn/extended, any buildings that were aligned to the original aprons will still be in their original positions. It's at this point that a complete scenery editor package becomes necessary.

See the FS2004 SDK for details of what exactly is included within the "AIRPORT" tag ... alternatively the help file supplied with AFCAD is quite comprehensive. 

Chris - in technical terms you may well be correct but in layman's terms AFCAD does indeed destroy features that it doesn't understand.

I mentioned the matter of placing a file at a higher level earlier.

Best regards,

John

I will kindly have to disagree about AFCAD. While super old yes, it can be helpful in basic situations. When using AIFP parking analyzer to make sure airports have enough parking, AFCAD can get this done quick and easy at little small dinky airports only needing 3 or 4 spots. I'll never have scenery for these airports, just want to make sure there's parking. Also, I still like it's ease of changing the radius of AI models. Now granted I use ADE WAY more than AFCAD, but it still has it's uses. 

Neil, I too am in the Chicagoland area. Hope you made it through the storms alright. Luckily I'm far enough away from the Fox so the flooding won't affect me.

Best Regards,

Jimmy

3 hours ago, John Hinson said:

Chris - in technical terms you may well be correct but in layman's terms AFCAD does indeed destroy features that it doesn't understand.
 

Only if you save the file from AFCAD with the same name as the original scenery file and allow it to overwrite the original scenery file ... at that point, yes, it's "destroyed", because it's been overwritten by a less featured file with the same name.

As you say, placing the edited file at a higher level, thereby retaining the original file, will usually work perfectly adequately.

22 hours ago, chris_eve said:

I agree, AFCAD is a little outdated in this day and age, but AFCAD doesn't "destroy" anything ... it simply only edits the "AIRPORT" tag within the more extensive scenery file created by ADE, SceneGenX etc., which may well have included buildings, excludes, flattens, statics etc., none of which are part of the AIRPORT tag.

If the edited file generated by AFCAD is placed in an active scenery folder ABOVE the original scenery in the Scenery Library, the replacement airport will become the active airport, all the other scenery details in the original file will remain active because AFCAD doesn't generate any EXCLUDES, however, if the AIRPORT outputted by AFCAD has been edited to a different elevation, then the other scenery elements may well appear to be "floating" or "sunken", at which point a more comprehensive editing solution will be necessary. Similarly, if aprons have been redrawn/extended, any buildings that were aligned to the original aprons will still be in their original positions. It's at this point that a complete scenery editor package becomes necessary.

See the FS2004 SDK for details of what exactly is included within the "AIRPORT" tag ... alternatively the help file supplied with AFCAD is quite comprehensive. 

LOL

I really appreciate all the info provided above, thanks to all.

While I was able to use ADE to modify my parking spots successfully, I am encountering the dreaded blurries while moving around the airport on certain AI planes/airport structures/terrain and some trees. I downloaded all of the scenery libraries listed in the readme that were housed here, but for obvious reasons, I can't grab the ones from FS. Most of them I already had installed anyway, but wanted to be sure I didn't miss anything.

In the past, there was also another Portland scenery I had installed that came from FS. I can't remember the authors name, but it wasn't a default improvement, but a new scenery that shows the tarmac as prototypical "PDX" black. This one was decent (for it's time), came with main route folder and an exclude and pdxez folder, but I can't for the life of me get rid of trees littering the west end of the airport. Followed the readme on layer order of importance for the 3 included folders, but trees are still visible.

PDX just doesn't want to play in the sandbox with me 😞

Neil

2 hours ago, qballbandit said:

 ... but I can't for the life of me get rid of trees littering the west end of the airport. Followed the readme on layer order of importance for the 3 included folders, but trees are still visible.

If you isolate the specific bgl file that contains the unwanted trees, you could just then decompile it and remove the trees before re-compiling ... alternatively, an EXCLUDE, set in a folder above the folder containing the problematic scenery, should hide them.

Sorry, I have no idea what "prototypical "PDX" black" is, or, indeed, PDX in any context, so can't help there.

PDX is the ticket code for Portland.

"Blurries" are most commonly caused by Landclass files in a scenery directory that also has a texture directory. It can also apparently be caused by excess work demanded from the CPU (which may be one and the same thing!). There may be some residue from the original scenery installed that is causing this, but it is worth checking there are no LC files in the scenery in question. That issue doesn't seem to affect all users and I have seen many sceneries distributed with LC files in the wrong place.

John