Building Object / Civil Structures

  • Good morning, I’m new to the community. I’d like to try my hand at building some historical buildings from my city in Italy, using SketchUp as my main software. Then export them to Blender to use the plugin downloadable from the Aerofly website.

    I do have a series of questions though:

    For the buildings to be in the correct scale (real meters of the structure) for the simulator, do they need to be modeled 1:1?

    When building the structures, should I leave them as solid bodies or should I delete all the faces that aren’t visible, keeping only the visible mesh?

    How do you place the building inside FS4 in the correct geographic position, and possibly how do you remove already existing buildings (autogen)?

    Is there a step-by-step tutorial that describes the process? Any videos? Or additional tools/applications to do this?

    Many thanks for the support!!!

    Greetings to everyone
    🇮🇹

  • ... How do you place the building inside FS4 in the correct geographic position, and possibly how do you remove already existing buildings (autogen)? ...

    Moin,

    at the end of your work you will have, among other things, an object file object.tmd. This is then embedded in a POI folder with the coordinates. Often, user-defined objects remove automatic objects, but not always. But then an object can be inserted "undergrain" that removes the automatically generated objects.

    I recommend that you take a look at FS 4 how POIs work. In addition, I recommend the search, because a lot has already been written on this topic, also with examples and explanations.

    Good luck.

    Tschüss, Michael (🍎🚁)

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  • It's really delightful to see that many users can add custom buildings for their own countries. Previously, I was working on some custom POIs for China. Last month, I created the Shenyang Imperial Palace. When modeling, you only need to set the unit to meters and build according to the actual proportion as shown in reality. I did this in Blender (and also in 3ds Max), and I have also used some.skp model files from SketchUp to create a dynamic Ferris wheel. So I think this is universal. As for the location, you can simply move the mouse cursor to the upper part of the building on the Aerofly Fs map interface, and there will be the corresponding coordinate position in the lower right corner. Of course, you can also easily obtain it from the map webpage. I hope these can help you.

  • It's really delightful to see that many users can add custom buildings for their own countries. Previously, I was working on some custom POIs for China. Last month, I created the Shenyang Imperial Palace. When modeling, you only need to set the unit to meters and build according to the actual proportion as shown in reality. I did this in Blender (and also in 3ds Max), and I have also used some.skp model files from SketchUp to create a dynamic Ferris wheel. So I think this is universal. As for the location, you can simply move the mouse cursor to the upper part of the building on the Aerofly Fs map interface, and there will be the corresponding coordinate position in the lower right corner. Of course, you can also easily obtain it from the map webpage. I hope these can help you.

    Congratulations, great work!!! please share more pictures, looks great.

    Best regards, Juan

  • SachaCC

    Please refer to my comments here:

    Rodeo
    March 4, 2026 at 7:29 PM

    In Google Maps you can get the coordinates by just right click at the desired position. For aerofly it it necessary to swap the lonlat coordinates.
    Also with a right click you can measure the size of buildings in Google Maps. And finally in Google Maps I use overlays like MB ruler to measure the rotation angle of the building, which you need in your CAD. Just calculate the difference to the N direction.

    Adding a building in aerofly automatically removes the existing building.
    If you want to clear a specific area around the building:
    Place a polygon in your CAD with the desired size and shape.
    Name that polygon 'nocultivation'
    Move that polygon below the ground, so below 0 in your CAD.
    Make sure to attach any texture file to it, the content does not matter at all.

    Start with your building, we will accompany you.

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