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Best Design Tool?

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What is the best design tool (tools?) for accomplishing the following?1. Remesh an island (I have a 10M mesh which is now in place)2. Move the island to where it belongs (and where the mesh is waiting)3. Fix the coastlines.4. Fix the texture of the island, especially the roads.5. Add structures to the island.6. Create an airport that: A. Has sloping runways to match the terrain, and B. Will work with AI trafficI have used the SDK to accomplish #1, but understand that Terrabuilder can do the same thing and can do at least part of #4. I understand that Coastlinemaker will handle #3 and at least the roads in #4, but that it will not change land to water or vice versa. I have been using FSSC to do #6, but want more flexibility to put things on the slope.Is there a single tool that will handle all these things, or does each task require a separate tool?Thanks,Phil

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I think the answer lies somewhere in between your two options. If there was a tool that did all of those things even passably well, it would be the talk of this forum. In fact, I dare say it would probably kill this forum ;-)! You'll need a few tools to accomplish everything you want. I'm quite inexperienced so far with remeshing, so I won't address that point. However, you can fix coastlines, change textures and alter roads using Christian Fumey's fantastic Ground2k program (available in the Avsim library). It does require that you familiarize yourself with the basics of LWM and VTP polys, and Dick Ludowise (Rhumbaflappy) has put together a great tutorial on that subject, also available here in the library. Adding structures will require that you build them using a 3D modeling tool such as Gmax, FSDS2, or one of the several simple object design tools. Placement on the landscape of those objects will require a program like Airport or FSArchitect if you want to build a library of building APIs and then place them as a group. Of course, in the 3D modeling packages mentioned you can also export the buildings individually or in groups directly to placed BGL files, but that tends to be a little rigid if you want to work with more than a couple of buildings and move them around at design time.As for sloping runways, the only way I know of to get them is to use VTP polys that are mesh-clinging for the texture. I don't think there's a way to "harden" a mesh-clinging poly, though, so all your sloped rwys will have to behave like dirt strips, which they most likely would be in real life anyway.Making an airport interact properly with AI traffic involves using Lee Swordy's AFCAD utility. There's good documentation with it, and a lot of information has been passed about on these forums concerning its use. To clarify a constant point of confusion about AFCAD, it only affects the "invisible" elements that the AI engine uses to determine how many gates, parking spaces, etc. an airport has. It doesn't make any changes at all in the actual visible objects. That should be enough to get you started, anyway!


Bill Womack

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