I have an answer for putting meat on the bones in FSDS!

[Sid2008]

I tried these procedures in FSDS and they work very well in making windows in an aircraft where you can see the thickness of the fuselage wall from the virtual cockpit.

Step 1. Make the fuselage shape by bending a cylinder, but don't cut out the windows.
Step 2. In the VC model, copy and paste this fuselage shape onto itself and select and flip all polygons in the copies fuselage.
Step 3. Shrink the flipped fuselage by a small factor, say 98% or 0.98 on all 3 axes. Join both fuselage parts in to 1 part, so that there is an "inside wall" and an "outside wall".
Step 4. Using boolean operation cut out windows and doors. This will be easier if you will split the joined fuselage part into half along the logitudinal axis (Z axis for FSDS).

When you do so, you will see that the boolean operation will give not only thickness to the windows but also provide a narrow surface around the window/door cutoff.

Instead of copy/paste fuselage and flipping polygons, you may also take one of the sections of the original cylinder and pull it under the other sections to give an interior wall to the cylinder.


Thanks to Adam Howe, Milton shupe and others who helped me understand this neat procedure.

 

[FelixFFDS]

Sid - thanks for sharing.

To be honest, I've used both methods you've described, but since most of my models tend to be open cockpit airplanes, I've learned to "mask" the thickness issue with a moulded "coaming" - a poor, abused cylinder twisted all around the opening...

Of course, the fun starts as you start texturing those "thickngess" parts.....


(unlike "other" programs where one selects the border/edge, creates a shape from the edge, shows the mesh and converts it to an object.)