>On Monday 12 June 2006 04:22, dene maxwell wrote: > > Hi > > Having edited airports there are a few things that tools like TaxiDraw > > provide that are invaluable; > > > > 1) super-imposing the airport layout on top of a scaled background >image > > to allow placement of taxiways etc in proportion to the RL layout. > > 2) providing lat/long readout for any point on the layout. > > 3) showing centre lines for runways/taxiways. > > 4) catering for such things as edge lighting and centre line lighting >etc. > > 5) exporting the beacon information to stg files > > > > not to mention; layering info, (even biezer curves will need layering at > > the interfaces), surface types etc. > > > > If a program like Inkscape can duplicate this and is multiplatform then >by > > all means..... > >Let see... > >1) Tracing taxiway outlines is time consuming and plain dumb. It takes >hours >just to create one airport. The SVG files on the other hand, are converted >from FAA Airport Diagrams, and it only took one command. Separating all >the >info in a SVG files took me less than ten minute. > Unfortunately the data kept by FAA/CAA or what ever the local administration is called is often out-of-date or just plain wrong. Experience of the last month has taught me that. Poring over aerial photos and current third-party documentation has shown significant discrepencies.
Dumb is a very subjective assessment, agreed it is time-comsuming, but is sometimes necessary to get not only positioning correct but also surface type. I seem to remember a while ago I provided examples of CAA airport documentation for conversion into SVG format and it couldn't be done because the color scheme used was not what the automated process needed. I am not aware of any numerical description available that would solve this. It is really great that you have managed to get this working for FAA diagrams ... It will be even better when it can be applied globally. >2) Lat/Long information is in the diagram itself. > Generally the lat/long information in the FAA/CAA diagrams is too coarse for some uses. I am currently doing AI flightplans and need to get Lat/long for touch-down points, braking points, and taxi-ing points. TaxiDraw provides this 6 decimal places. The FAA diagram doesn't. IIRC the French CAA diagrams don't even have lat/long references apart from the various navaid locations. >3) You can create a new layer in inkscape and draw the center lines >wherever >you want. This degree of freedom would be extremely valuable when creating >centerlines on the apron. > >4) The lights could be automatically generated a long the edge of a >taxiway, >no big deal. > >5) This functionality could be added to the bash script. > >Ampere > Please don't get me wrong, I am not running down your efforts or approach. All I'm saying is that this is what TaxiDraw has at the moment and was asking the question. I look forward to an automated tool. As you rightly pointed out, in certain circumstances it can be a very time consuming process at the moment. Regards :-D ene _________________________________________________________________ Discover fun and games at @ http://xtramsn.co.nz/kids _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
