Build 14 of FSX Planner is now available (June 2)

[Guest rf360m]

Hi all,Release 16 of FSX Planner is now available. It can be downloaded here:http://www.zbluesoftware.com/clients/FSXPlanner.zipThis release cleans up a lot of display issues relating to decimal places, and especially to the XML output, which has been completely rewritten to be much more user friendly for those who like to hand code xml.Here are the changes:* The xml code write engine has been completely rewritten. The extra lines that were created before are no longer created. Attributes are now output in the order specified in the SDK documentation. There is now an option to display each attribute on a separate line (default), or all on one line. This can be adjusted via the preferences dialog.* Markers and VORs are now saved to the airport xml file.* There was a bug which would make the Find Airport feature give incorrect file/folder results for certain airports. This has been fixed.* You can now specify the default tee 1 - tee 4 offsets for a parking space. This is accessible through the Defaults tab of the Preferences Dialog.* All values that are displayed in spinners (ie altitudes, widths, lengths, etc) are now displayed and can be edited to 3 decimal places.* Modified how apron vertices, boundary fence vertices and blast fence vertices are added and deleted. To add a vertex, use the appropriate tool and shift-click where you want the vertex to be added. Note that you must click on a valid location for a vertex. To delete a vertex, control-click on the vertex you want to delete. This change was made to create a more uniform approach to adding and removing vertices throughout FSX Planner and also to allow for the right click popup menu.* The Navigation toolbar and the View -> Navigation Toolbar menu now communicates properly so that they stay synched.* The Airport Data Display and the Object Data Display panels are now tear-offs and can be moved to other locations on the screen, or to other monitors, or they can be hidden. To do so, click on the title bar of either the airport data display or the object data display and drag it to the desired new location. Clicking the X in the title bar will return the window to the docked location on the left. Clicking the X when the window is docked will hide it. There are two new menu options under the View menu which also control the visibility of these windows. If the panel is hidden and you want to see it, select the appropriate view sub-menu. If you want to hide one of the panels, uncheck the appropriate View sub-menu option.* The NDB tool has been implemented. You can now add, view and edit NDBs for the airport. This tool is available under the navigation Toolbar (View -> Navigation Toolbar).* A check for VORs and NDBs without Idents has been added to the error checking dialog (Compile -> Error Checking).* A check for taxiway paths that have invalid start or end indices has been added to the error checking dialog. (Compile -> Error Checking).* The Clean Up Taxiways option, under the Edit menu, now also checks for taxiways that have non-existant start or end points and deletes those taxiways.* The Find Taxiway Point dialog has been added. This is available under the Edit menu. It allows you to enter the index number of a taxiway point or parking location and then have that location displayed if it exists. This is intended to help in debugging errors within the airport due to incorrect or non-existant taxiway point indices.-Russell

[Guest rf360m]

I found the cause of this problem. The .xml extension for the file was in uppercase (.XML) and FSX Planner was expecting .xml, which caused it to not find it.I have modified this, allowing FSX Planner to ignore the case of the xml extension. This fix will be included in release 17.-Russell

[Guest rf360m]

The xml was missing the following lines:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>Then insert your airport here.Thats was causing the crash, as FSX Planner was expecting the FSData element and did not find it.-Russell

[Guest rf360m]

Hi Ross,I did some experimenting and it seems the placement error was caused by the BiasX value being set to zero for both the left and right VASIs. This caused them to be shown in the middle of the runway. Setting them to a value of 30 placed the VASIs correctly off to the left and right of the runway.According to the SDK, the BiasX value is the distance to the left or right of the center line that the VASI should be drawn.The BiasZ value is the distance from the center of the runway that the VASI should be drawn.So a value of 30 worked well for the BiasX. But you may want to tweak that to get them in the exactly right position.-Russell

[Guest rf360m]

A bug was found in release 16 that caused a crash when saving certain airports that contained NDBs. This has been fixed and a new zip folder has been uploaded with the corrected version. It is recommended that anyone who has downloaded release 16 should download it again to get this fix.It's available here: http://www.zbluesoftware.com/clients/FSXPlanner.zip-Russell

[Rossco 23]

G'day Russell,Thanks for the update. Had a quick look last night & have to report that I still cannot get the correct airport info from the search engine. I believe this was supposed to be fixed? I am trying to open Australian airports.Cheers,Ross

[Guest rf360m]

I though it had been fixed. :)What airport is being incorrectly found?-Russell

[Rossco 23]

G'day Russell,I tried both YBTL which I am currently working on & YBUD which I'm yet to look at & neither of the files showed up in the suggested folders. The file nominated for YBTL was incorrect in any case. Am not at home at the moment so am unable to give you the correct file but I think I mentioned it in a previous post.Cheers,Ross

[wsieffert 0]

Ah, the simple things that get us!! LOL!Regards,W. Sieffert

[Guest rf360m]

Hi all,Release 17 of FSX Planner is now available. This cleans up several bugs as well as incorporating several new features.Here's the list of what has been updated or added:* Exclusion Rectangles have been added, allowing you to delete taxiway signs, windsocks, etc. To include an exclusion rectangle use the Exclusion tab of the Prepare Options dialog. You can specify the exact location of the rectangle, or have one created that covers the entire airport. You can also specify exactly what this rectangle should delete.* The cut/copy/paste feature has been implemented. You can now cut, copy and paste most objects. To copy or cut an object select it then use the right click popup menu or the ctrl-x or ctrl-c commands, When pasting an object it will be pasted at the current cursor location. Aprons and fences are pasted so that the center of the apron or fence is at the current cursor location.* Added the ability to specify default values for Runway Threshold Offsets, Blast Pads, Overruns and VASIs. These are available under the Runway tab of the Preferences dialog.* FSX Planner now recognizes Latitude/Longitude coordinates in five different formats. These formats can be used to enter lat/lon coordinates in any lat/lon text field within FSX Planner. They are: N40 46.6345, N40 46 38.07, 40 46.6345N, 40 46 38.07N and 40.77724167.* A Clean Taxiway Points check has been added. This searches the airport for taxiway points and parking locations that have no taxiways associated with them and deletes them.* A Clean All check has been added. This is a convenience option that runs all the Clean... checks.* The Clean... checks menu options have been moved to the Compile menu from the Edit menu. The Find Airport menu option has been moved to the File menu from the Compile menu. This was done to better group similar functionality.* Modified the handling of NDBs so that terminal NDBs can now be opened, saved and edited.* Tweaked the object property displays to help keep similar properties together.* A dialog is now displayed when you close an airport display within FSX Planner to ask you if you want to save the airport before it closes, or to cancel the close action.* The color used to highlight selected objects is now user definable via the Colors tab of the Preferences dialog.* The user can now specify whether selected objects should be outlined or highlighted. The default is to outline a selected object. This can be changed in the Display tab of the Preferences dialog.* The Compile Dialog has been adjusted to allow for more user configurability with regards to the final placement and name of the compiled BGL file.Bug fixes:* Fixed a bug that sometimes caused incorrect taxiways to be deleted when a taxiway point or a taxiway parking location was deleted.* FSX Planner was looking at file names in a case-sensitive manner. This would cause it not to display files with .XML extensions in the open dialog. This has ben fixed and file names are now case insensitive.* Fixed a bug in the Error Checking display that prevented taxiways, runways, NDB and VORs from being displayed when you clicked on their name in the results table.* Fixed a bug that caused VASI values to be read incorrectly from the XML file.As usual it can be downloaded here: http://www.zbluesoftware.com/clients/FSXPlanner.zip-Russell

[Guest Speed]

Thank you for looking at the code...Ill try it out tomorrow.

[Guest]

Very nice piece of work so far! As I start modifying an airport, I've found one bug:File - Find Airport - I type in an ICAO and I get a dialog box saying that the airport cannot be found, but the folder and bgl ARE correctly displayed in the Find Airport Dialog.I look forward to playing with this some more. Thanks!Paul DahlenEdit: This is Build 17 I'm using.

[Guest rf360m]

That's odd! What was the ICAO code you searched for?-Russell

[Guest]

Doesn't seem to matter which airport I look for. So far I've tried PATK, PANC, and KCLT - all with the same result: dialog saying "Airport Not Found" but the proper folder/file being displayed.Don't know if it matters, but my FSX and SDK are not on the C: drive - I've had to redirect all the default paths.

[Guest rf360m]

I just tried those three and for all three it found the airport and said 'Airport file found'. Not having your FSX on the C drive shouldn't matter as long as you have the paths pointing to the appropriate location. Right now I'm not sure why it would say the airport wasn't found if it actually was found.