Military AI Works

I thought I would start a small tips and tricks thread as even after all these years, I'm still learning the program.

Please feel free to add your own tips and tricks if you would like to add to the knowledge base for FSDS.

The "home" and "end" keys will take you:

A) In part mode-to the first part in the list (home) or the last part in the list (end)
B) In polygon mode-to the first polygon of that part (home) or to the last polygon of that part {end)
C) In point mode-to the first point in the part (home) or to the last point in the part (end)
D) In cross section mode-to the first cross section in the part (home) or to the last cross section in the part (home)

This feature can be very useful when dealing with complex parts that have a lot of polys or points. Having to scroll through hundreds of points or parts to get to the one you want can be a giant pain.

If you hold down the ctrl key, move your cross hairs to wherever in the design window that you want the window centered on and then press the left mouse button. This will center the view on that spot.

Part naming:

If you name a part "engine" and make a copy of it, then paste it, the new part will be named "engine.1"

However if you name a part "engine.1" and copy/paste, the new part will be named sequentially, "engine.2".

This is very useful if you have a model with multiple parts that are identical, a four engine aircraft for example. I can make the first engine, name it "engine.1" and make three copies of it. Those three copies would be named "engine.2", "engine.3" and "engine.4" which just happens to be the way the engines are named on real aircraft.

This can be a very good way to organize your parts in a large project.

Something to be very careful about if you have autosave enabled:

If you load up a project and then proceed to make for example three changes to it, but then you don't like what you did and start using the undo (back) button, if you go back more than three times, you will get a blank screen as if the project wasn't loaded.

If your autosave feature just happens to capture this moment in time, you will LOSE all of your work on that project. The file will still be present, but it will not have any parts.

This has got me on many occasions and cost me many hours of work having to recover from this quirk.

My advice, every time you save your project, save it with a different name. I use a different letter of the alphabet at the end of the name for each updated version. If the situation above happens, you can hopefully just go back to the last version which hopefully isn't that different from your latest version.

Discovered by John Burtenshaw:

Highlight the points you don't want to work on using the space bar, select them and press the H key. The selected points will be hidden so you can now work on points without affecting other points, this is very useful if you are joining points and adding points to a part. To see the points again press Shift-H. I've found it useful for cutting out doors and windows and joining two points.

This one is most likely simple but if you right click when in a design window you can click toggle backdrop, this saves a lot of time in going to the drop down menu.

Also changing the Grid size is very useful aswell that is in the drop down menu

With a given design window active (highlighted) pressing the "B" key also toggles the background image off and on.

I have found that having you background in negative hels a lot (only if it is black and white tho) I find it makes it easier to see the aircraft lines when they are white against a black background. Maybe not for everyone but I prefer it

Don't forget you can change the color of any of the FSDS lines, background etc to whatever color you want to.

I never knew that, how do you do that?

Go to File/Preference, you can change any of those line colors in there.

I think I covered this very briefly in the very first tutorial video.

Just another simple one here. when you are not in a mode i.e. move, rotate and scale you can hold the Ctrl key and the left click on you mouse and that will centre your screen to where ever you clicked, saves having to right click every time and then centre

MIKE JG wrote:If you hold down the ctrl key, move your cross hairs to wherever in the design window that you want the window centered on and then press the left mouse button. This will center the view on that spot.

Yep.

Hello.

I am building a fs9 ai helicopter model.

Most of the models have been completed.

However, I don't know if I can take a break from vertical takeoff and landing.

I want to know the xml code for vertical take-off and landing, but I can't find it.

I'd like to request a tip or tricks for vertical takeoff and landing.

Thank you.

Not sure what you mean by "However, I don't know if I can take a break from vertical takeoff and landing", but I have PM'd you some information that you should find useful.

John

John Young wrote: ↑02 Jul 2017, 16:42 Not sure what you mean by "However, I don't know if I can take a break from vertical takeoff and landing", but I have PM'd you some information that you should find useful.

John

Dear John.
Thank you very much for your kind reply.
Your response was a lot of help.
And thank you very much for your wonderful work.

fltaccent wrote: ↑03 Jul 2017, 01:22

John Young wrote: ↑02 Jul 2017, 16:42 Not sure what you mean by "However, I don't know if I can take a break from vertical takeoff and landing", but I have PM'd you some information that you should find useful.

John

Dear John.
Thank you very much for your kind reply.
Your response was a lot of help.
And thank you very much for your wonderful work.

These posts are most interesting. I have dabbled in FSDS but there's always more to learn.
However, when I read posts such as the one above, I feel somewhat "left out".
I have come across similar posts in this forum, where PMs are used.

Forums offer a medium for sharing data, information and tips with others who may be interested.
Anybody who bothers to take time to search, select and read threads and posts is surely an interested person.
So why is some data and information - virtually unobtainable elsewhere - shunted to PMs that nobody else can see and learn from, except the sender and receiver ?

Why is the "data" in these PMs not also posted - for example as an attachment/text file etc - so that any interested party can also analyze and sift through the data...?

It's because the large xml knowledge that we have here is made up of contributions from different people, some still active and some not. Rather than broadcast the information to the world, I'd rather deal on a personal basis and tailor my response accordingly, because invariably a dialogue is likely to follow. As in the above case, the designer had demonstrated signficant progess with helicopter design and I was more than happy to help build on what's been achieved. If Janeway wants to build helicopters I'll help with specific questions on that too, as will others I'm sure.

John

It's also because the folks here have spent the last 11 years learning these things and maybe, just maybe they want to keep some of these hard learned things to themselves and only share them with people they know they can trust.

What if for example, someone just searched the forums here and took what they learned and applied it to their own payware product thereby profiting off of the knowledge of others that they gained from here. Don't think it won't happen, it already has in the past.

No one is keeping secrets here, if someone wants to know how to do something, we're happy to share that knowledge with that person as long as they show the desire to actually learn the process instead of just being given the keys.

Too many people come here and just simple say "tell me how to do this so that I can do it for myself." Very few people here take the initiative to say "I'd like to learn how to do this, can you help me."

The difference in those two approaches to the same thing are night and day. I'm more than happy to help someone learn how to do something, I'm less inclined to just tell them how to do it where they really don't have a clue what they're doing other than following instructions.