Re: Sub Zero Ice Maker Manual
Christal Rasband
There are as many different ways to go about working in Plane Maker as there are aircraft designers. The following steps, though, serve as a good workflow sequence to start from when modeling in Plane Maker:
Remember that definitions for any unfamiliar terms may be found in the Glossary. Helpful information has been built into every screen of Plane Maker as well. Hold the mouse pointer over any of the boxes or buttons to bring up an explanation of the setting.
To open an aircraft in Plane Maker, click on the File menu and click Open, per Figure 2.1. There, navigate to the folder containing the .acf file you want to modify, then double click on the ACF, or click once and click the Open button.
You can move the whole aircraft model left, right, up, or down by using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Note that the axes are inverted; press the left arrow to move the model right, press the down arrow to move it up, and so on.
You can use the W, A, S, and D keys to spin and roll the 3-D model around its center. You can use the - and = keys to zoom out and in, respectively. Note that you can zoom in and out or move the model faster by holding down the Shift key while pressing the up, down, left, right, -, or = keys.
If we were to save this file (as a copy, of course, so that we did not modify the original 777 file) and fly it in X-Plane, we would find that the wings generate significantly more lift, but they also make the aircraft much less maneuverable (functions of having a high aspect ratio).
Taking a step back, this example is useful because it demonstrates a very common interface in Plane Maker. In the Foil Specs portion of the Wings dialog box, we have a number of properties of any given wing, each of which can be set individually and which combine to give a complete wing.
The sweep is the angle that the wings are swept back from sticking straight out the side of the airplane. Wing sweep is used to allow high-speed travel (above Mach 0.7 or so), because the wing does not have to attack the air head-on.
A few ideas will come up over and over again throughout the creation of an aircraft body. The first is the concept of the reference point, and the second is the way in which positions in Plane Maker are set relative to the reference point. Understanding these two things ahead of time will make learning the specifics of creating the fuselage, wings, and other objects much faster.
As we have said, all locations in Plane Maker are defined relative to a fixed, arbitrary point, often the tip of the fuselage. However, there is more to defining the position of, for instance, a wing than to say that it is five feet behind the tip of the fuselage. How high above the tip of the fuselage is it? How far left or right?
The standard position parameters throughout Plane Maker are the longitudinal arm, the lateral arm, and the vertical arm, as illustrated in Figure 3.2. Each measurement is in relation to the reference point.
Note that in cases where an object has lateral symmetry (that is, it is duplicated on both sides of the aircraft, as a wing section is), the guidelines in the table above apply to the object on the right (starboard) side of the aircraft. Likewise, the lateral arm value is reversed for the object on the left (port) side. Thus, a positive lateral arm value for a certain wing section means the right wing section will move right of the reference point, while the left wing section will move left of the reference point.
There are five tabs across the bottom row of tabs, seen in Figure 3.3. In order, these are Section, Top, Side, Bottom, and Front/Back. Each tab serves a different purpose. The Section tab displays a cross-section view of the fuselage, sliced into a number of pieces. The Top/Side/Bottom tabs show three different perspectives of the points defined in the cross-section view, allowing you to see their relation in three-dimensional space. Finally, the Front/Back tab shows the same points of the fuselage from a head-on on perspective; this is like looking down the nose and tail, respectively, of a wireframe model of the aircraft.
Aside from these miscellaneous controls, the Section tab has four main divisions. These are the Body Setup box, the body location box, the Body Texture box, and the Cross-Sections box, described in the following sections.
In addition to the standard location controls, the Body Location box also contains directional controls. These are in the form of the heading, pitch, and roll offset parameters. The table below lists the interpretations of these values. For instance, setting a negative value in the heading offset will cause the fuselage to pivot to point left; when seen from above, the fuselage will pivot counterclockwise however many degrees are input here.
The Body Texture box is used for fine-tuning the painted texture on the aircraft (alternately known as a skin or a livery). For information on working with paint textures on the aircraft, see Modifying the Appearance of an Aircraft. For information on the parameters found in this box in particular, see the section of that chapter titled Fine-Tuning a Paint Job.
At the top of each station is an input field controlling how far behind the reference point this particular slice will be. For instance, in the example cross-section of Figure 3.7, the slice is located 6.1 feet behind the reference point (indicated by the box labeled 1 in the image). Thus, in an aircraft whose reference point is the tip of the nose, this section would be about 6 feet from the nose. Of course, a cross-section could have a negative value here and be moved in front of the reference point.
Sometimes in the course of editing these cross-section points, it may be useful to zoom in and out or move the cross-sections around. You can zoom using the - and = keys, and you can move the sections using the left, right, up, and down arrow keys. This does not affect the model itself; it only changes the view of the model in editing.
To shape a station, simply click the radius points that make it up and drag them around. Just like in the Section tab, you can double click a point to lock it, preventing future smoothing operations from moving it on it.
The standard movement controls (the up, down, left, and right arrows, as well as the - and = keys for zooming) all operate as you would expect in this window, allowing you to zoom in or out and shift your view around.
The views are mirrored in their upper and lower halves; dragging a point in the upper half of the top view will drag its corresponding point in the lower half of that view (in addition to dragging the same point in the side view). They are mirrored like this because the left side view itself is mirrored on the right; thus, the top view, for instance, shows the top half of both the left and right sides.
However, in some cases, it is desirable to not have all your sections vertically aligned. In this case, if you still wanted to align the out-of-whack section seen in Figure 3.8, you would need to first click one of the points in the section you wanted to align. Then, after you have effectively told Plane Maker which section you want to modify, you would click the Reset this section to vertical button.
At the bottom of this window are buttons to load an image, clear it or zoom. This can be quite useful for laying out your points properly. For instance, you could take two scale drawings of your aircraft (one to be used in both the top and bottom views and one to be used in the side view) and drag the radius points to match up with this image.
For instance, in Figure 3.9, we cut up two scale images to be the same size, with the center of the image corresponding to the center of the fuselage, and loaded the images into Plane Maker. From there, we simply dragged the outermost points (or uppermost points, as the case may be) to match the edges of the fuselage in the image. Following that, we dragged the inner points to match the known shape of the fuselage.
The Front/Back tab of the Bodies dialog box contains two views of the cross-section, front and back. The front view shows the first twelve stations (if there are twelve stations to show) as though you were looking down the nose of a wireframe fuselage model. The back view, on the other hand, shows the last ten stations (again, if there are ten stations to show) as though you were standing at the tail looking down the wireframe model.
The standard movement controls (the up, down, left, and right arrows, as well as the - and = keys for zooming) all operate as you would expect in this window. Using the arrow keys, you can move the wire model over to view the whole fuselage, too, instead of just a half.
Each body is modeled almost identically to the fuselage; there is a Section, Top, Side, Bottom, and Front/Back tab for each body, just as there is for the fuselage. Be aware of the Insert button, located between stations in the Cross-Sections box. Clicking this button will insert a new station between the stations on the left and right sides of the button. Note that you can only use the Insert button when you have fewer than 20 stations.
Wings in Plane Maker are composed of individual wing sections. A very simple wing might be made up of a single wing section, while a very complex wing might be made up of four or more wing sections. Each wing section can have control surfaces added, such as ailerons, elevators, or flaps. Furthermore, each wing section can have its cross-sectional shape (its airfoil) set independently of other sections.
To add control surfaces like elevators, rudders, ailerons, or flaps to a given wing section, you must tell Plane Maker where you want each control surface on the wing and you must define the control surfaces themselves. The first part is done using the Element Specs box found in the Wings dialog box, while the second part is done in the Control Geometry dialog box, launched from the Standard menu. The order in which you do these does not matter; do them in whatever order makes the most sense to you.
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