posted 02-13- 08:02 PM               

Also I noticed a bug.... atleast i think it's a bug. If a child has a DOF, and you rotate the parent, the child's DOF goes off at a wierd angle, and you can't change it.... Like I re-position it, save, then load it up again and it's back to the other angle.... Anyone have this problem too?

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Cheers!
Jaguar
The FS Hangar

posted 02-13- 08:23 PM               

Open your wingtip .lod in your 3D program, and rotate it so that it's lying "flat", with the aileron leading edge parallel to the main coordinate axis (X-axis I think). Export it with this orientation.

Do the same thing with the aileron itself.

Now you should have a wingtip and aileron in OPS with the "aileron hinge" exactly on the x-axis. Move the aileron in OPS to match up with the wingtip. NOW put in the DOF, and manually edit the DOF axis. It should be exactly parallel to the x-axis, i.e. the DOF axis will be 1,0,0 exactly.

Now move the DOF using OPS so that it's exactly on the aileron hinge, centered on the aileron.

Now you have a wing that's perfectly level, with an aileron that's perfectly level, and a DOF that's perfectly level, but the wing will be "swept back" a few degrees because you oriented it so that aileron hinge point was along the x-axis. But you should now be able to rotate the WING in OPS so that the leading edge is at the correct angle for the SBD and give it the proper dihedral, and the aileron should follow its parent, with its DOF tagging along.

Or you can do it like I do--spend about 2 hours of trial and error on each part

posted 02-13- 08:43 PM               

I decided to try doing this in AC3D building the plane by using Hippie's plugins and swapping the objects with his tool. Everything is lining up just incredibly well, very accurate, however the DOF's are all lost with the export to .asc and the numbers generated are off when I try to edit them in OPS. Also, the DOF tool either just sits there half the time, returning nothing or tells me I have to select two verices, when I just selected two. Very frustrating. Sometimes it will work, but the numbers seem dubious, giving me huge decimal numbers, where the axis should be 1,0,0.

A good tutorial on DOF's is sorely needed!

posted 02-13- 09:54 PM               

Unfortunitly this might thwart jedi's theory (I havn't read it thoughly enough to say for sure...) .

If you look at the tutorial I did for MAX->OPS there is a DOF section, and although its written for MAX it will apply to other 3D editors. Unfortunitly I just discovered a strange bug when testing this out, it appears that occasionally only the first DOF you edit in a OPS session will work so I need to look at this one...

posted 02-14- 09:37 AM               

for alignment, what would be soooo cool is if you could just say, ok, I want to add a DOF between this edge of the parent, and this edge of the control surface, highlight each edge, hit a magic button and boom, there is your DOF and parts, perfectly aligned. All you have left to do is the DOF properties. Or AT LEAST instead of the DOF showing up at the models origin, when you have a part selected and go into DOF mode and add a dof, it shows up right at that part.

Could that be done?

posted 02-14- 10:05 AM               

First, save your wingtip shapes as something you can identify easily, i.e. SBDWingT.lod and SBDAileron.lod.

Then, in OPS, DELETE the wingtip and aileron from your plane (yes, DELETE it).

Then, import the wingtip and aileron from an existing SDOE plane, for example, the Typhoon. Since you deleted your wingtip, all the goofed up DOF info is gone too. The Typhoon wing has "good" DOF info built into it. Save the .sm file. Now you have a Dauntless with a stupid Typhoon wing, but don't get excited...

Now, using Extractor, extract the new .sm file into its parts. Go into AC3D and open the wingtip.lod and the aileron.lod (the Typhoon-shaped ones). Now, also open the SBD wingtip and aileron you saved earlier. CAREFULLY modify the Typhoon wing/aileron to match the outline of the SBD wing/aileron, changing the points of the aileron hinge area as little as possible. This yields a not-quite-perfectly shaped SBD wing with a hopefully-perfectly-aligned aileron joint.

Now export your ex-Typhoon-now-SBD wing back out as a .lod, and recompile the .sm file using Builder. When you open this in OPS, the DOF info from the Typhoon should be retained on your new shape. You should then be able to move the wingtip without screwing up the aileron.

Now you have to change all the properties of the wing from Typhoon to SBD

May be easier in the long run to just use trial and error tho. What I do is build my aileron in AC3D in its correct position in relation to the wing. I know that's technically "wrong" but having the aileron exactly in position without having to move it any in OPS helps for me. Then make sure the DOF "cylinder" is exactly centered on the front edge of the aileron, with the blue/red vertex point as close to centered as you can get it. That way the aileron at least rotates around the right point. After that it's trial and error. I find that using the arrow keys to rotate the DOF instead of the mouse gives better initial adjustments. Once you have it "almost right," then you can make the little adjustments with the mouse. Be sure you check the view from several angles to make sure the DOF is perfectly lined up. Also, don't switch from rotational adjustment to lateral adjustment without clicking some other part first--it seems to make the DOF "jump" out of place.

No magic solution here, I know. Probably need to get a little finer adjustment capability in OPS, or else the ability to constrain adjustments to 1 or 2 dimensions.

posted 02-14- 04:46 PM               

Thanks for the tips guys! I have some time to kill today, so I'm going to try the trial and error methind first. If that doesn't work, then I'll do as Jedi suggests. It makes sense to me , but I always haveto do things the hard way. It's just the way I am LOL.

I wasn't paying close attention, but I went back trough my backup files as I was making the dauntless I noticed that the point where I lost my DOFs where when I rotated the part. Not when it was imported, as I had first thought.

What is the OPS tolerance?

Thanks again guys.

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Cheers!
Jaguar
The FS Hangar