data:

I think I know what is wrong. After taking a closer look at you cord', it appears that you started your flattening area at the northeast corner. The manual says start it in the northwest and go eather cw or ccw, so try the following:

Flatten.0=470.9,N53 27.68,W0 48.72,N53 27.68,W0 47.59,N53 26.61,W0 47.59,N53 26.61,W0 48.72

Just copy this and past it into your area and see if it does the trick.

Befor you do, you might check the area due east of your airport and see if it is flat.  Bet it is.

Let me know if this works.

Steve

Data. I assume you're creating a new airport in AFCAD. I've never done this myself & haven't used a manual Flatten switch since the early days of FS2000. I just read the instructions included with the latest version of AFCAD & the principle is exactly the same as in FS2000. There's a link to this page in the AFCAD instructions. http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulator/fs2000_articles_sceneryobjects.as...
I suspect this is the "manual" that Steve is talking about. It might also be included in one of the FS2004 SDKs.

Just to make sure you're doing this correctly the new scenery must be activated in FS9 before it will work. The Flatten switch line is added below the existing entry for the scenery.

I hope this is some help.

The last time I messed around with AFCAD or TTools was in FS2002. Things are a little different in FS9 so it's no use me giving anything but general advice. I might trying creating a small airport in FS9 with AFCAD later to find out what all this is about.

The comprehensive instructions included with TTools should tell you all you need to know. These are not always easy to understand so make sure you read them carefully. I found that a front end utility like AITM makes it so much easier to  work with TTools. http://www.molitor-home.de/fs/News.html

Maybe it would help if I know the problem & exactly what you wish to do. The Flatten switch will flatten the area around the runway or airport. If the entries are not exactly right you should see a warning message on starting FS9. I'm not sure the Exclude switch works for all objects in FS9. I found a little utility that creates Flatten switches & Area16N Flat area BGLs. http://www.fs-traveler.com/flatten.shtml This might be better but might confuse you even more. It requires FSUIPC.DLL & other extra files to work. I haven't tried it yet.

I tried creating a small airstrip in AFCAD with no problems. From what I can make out this only adds the basic runway with no other scenery objects. It might be easier to create the visual airport with one of the conventional scenery design applications, Airport for Windows or FS Scenery Creator. Then add the menu entries, parking gates, navaids & all the other bits & pieces with AFCAD. This is how I would tackle it myself.

Hager:   Good point about the alt, I assumed it was ok, and we all know what "ass-u-me" spells

Also thanks for pointing out that we can put the flatten switch in the main scenery folder. I've always put in the root folder.

Hopfully data has it now. The last thing I had noticed was his starting point with the coord', as I understand it you have to start in the NW corner. I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

Steve

Hager:  It was a good guess. I'm not sure what happens if it is to high, but if you place it over hills and don't set the elevation low enough you will see the tops of the hills flattend and still have some low areas.

As for the scenery.cfg file, I understood that the flatten and exclude files went into the one located in the FS9 folder, which is found under the Doc and Settings folder.

It took me a long time to learn that the starting point had to be in the upper left corner. And that the exclude uses only a lat for north and south, lon for west and east. And they have to be in N, W, S, E order.

Anyway hopfully we have done some good here and data will let us know if all is okey now.

See ya in the posts

Steve

Thanks for the input to an interesting thread I built my first airport using Lee's AF2 and was disappointed by the lack of a flatten switch (trees in runway) Lee tells me he will include this in the next AF2 release (due out in June 04)
Bill
http://members.shaw.ca/bai/wwa/wji-airport.jpg

Hager  Great post, that is the manual I was refering to earlier. Its also where I found that I was doing the exclude wrong, ie... you don't use both Lat/Lon for each leg.

Really helps when one reads the instruction.

Steve