AFCAD Questions

[robtheump]

Hello,

I'm a little confused on AFCADS. What exactly do they do? Can they be used on other freeware scenery add ons? Any limitations to them?

Thank you!

Rob

[FalconAF]

AFCAD is the old term from the days of FS9 and earlier. Back then, they only "modified" an airport in areas like adding more parking spaces, re-arranging runway and taxiway layouts (like if a real world airport runway\taxiway layout changed, a new AFCAD could be made and used in FS), etc. Today, an "AFCAD" can be much more. They are made with programs like Airport Design Editor (freeware), AFX (payware), and another one who's name I can't recall right now. With these new programs, the "AFCAD" can contain buildings and other scenery items. And the "AFCAD" can contain MANY files...which can cause problems in the proper installation of them into FSX if you get a lot of them. Some "AFCADs" today are more like complete "airport addons" for FSX instead of the old "single file" AFCAD of the past.

An "AFCAD" is made to either replace a DEFAULT FSX airport all by itself, or it may be included as an addition to an "airport package addon". Examples:

1. You have a default airport in FSX, and you just want to do some "minor" upgrades to it, like add more parking spaces and maybe some more scenery objects to the airport (buildings, etc). These "AFCADs" can be used separately to enhance the default FSX airports without causing any problems with other airports in FSX.

2. You purchase a commerical "airport addon" for something like KJFK, Kennedy International. These addons will normally contain their OWN SPECIALIZED "AFCAD" designed SPECIFICALLY for that addon. If you use a different "AFCAD" with the airport, you will usually encounter problems.

So, the way you ADD the "AFCADs" to your Scenery Library is paramount. You need to ensure you "layer" them correctly so they don't interfere with each other, and other scenery addons you may have.

There are several ways to do this. One of them is included in a tutorial I wrote a while back included in this link (you will have to read the entire thread to get the full benefit of the tutorial):

http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=67367&hl=

FalconAF

[scott967]

Just to put my own spin on it, the original AFCAD program (well, at least the first I encountered) was designed at a time when FS had a separate set of files called aiport facility data. These files contained airport info that was "invisible" as far as scenery was concerned. Things like radio frequencies, info for ATC (such as position of parking spots, taxiways, runways, etc) and things like that. There were other scenery files that contained the actual visual elements like runways terminals, etc. So it was not uncommon to have facility data that didn't match the visual data, resulting in AI taxiing across the grass and things like that. One interesting side effect of that design was that it was common at large airports for developers to create several facility data files for the same airport, but set up so certain AI would use only one of these sets of facility data. Since it had no visual impact it was pretty much invisible to the user.

So MS, in their wisdom, decided to combine the invisible facility data with the visual scenery into single files, and created a tool for addon developers to work with (bglcomp). The AFCAD program was modified, but it pretty much still worked with the same class of facility data, it's just that now facility data such as taxiways that also have visual scenery associated with them could be modified in AFCAD without having to create separate visual scenery -- much easier for developers. But AFCAD was never extended into adding other airport scenery which hadn't originally been part of the facility data files. For example, taxisigns, terminal buildings, windsocks, things like that. So the need still existed for using tools besides AFCAD to do a complete airport makeover. Some programs like SceneGenX allowed for this type of design. This has led to nomenclature problems, as the files created by programs contain data that AFCAD doesn't understand, but still are often referred to as "AFCADs". The problem has expanded with the release of ADEX, FSX Planner, and AFX, tools which allow still more parts of an airport to be developed.

I prefer to use the term "AFCAD" in a restricted sense to refer to files which contain only the data which can be created by the AFCAD2 program, but it has been common in the community to use the term in an expanded sense that includes all scenery related to an airport as done with the MS bglcomp tool (that is, AFCAD so far does not include things like terrain vectors or resample data like landclass even though they might be considered part of an airport).

scott s.
.

[n4gix]

Scott is quite correct. Technically, AFCAD is an acronym for the design program named "Aircraft Facilities Computer Aided Design." Hence, it's quite understandable why the acronym caught on...

Unfortunately, folks started calling the output file(s) generated by AFCAD, "AFCADs..."

It's much like folks calling all instant pictures "Polaroids" even if they were taken with a Kodak camera, or all tissues being referred to as "Kleenex" even when they are from some generic manufacturer...

...or hospitals using the code "MRS" (Mucus Recovery System) so they can bill the insurance company $65/box... (Nota Bene: this not a joke!)

I once suggest that a better name for files generated from ADE9X be called "ADEs," that that never seemed to catch on...