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14 3. SHAPING THE BODY OF AN AIRCRAFT
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.
In the vast majority of aircraft designs, it makes sense to think of the fuselage as the center of
the aircraft, so these parameters will not be used.
The Body Texture Box
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 Chapter 8,
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.”
The Cross-Sections Box
The Cross-Sections box shows slices of the aircraft’s fuselage. There is one slice of the fuselage for
each gridded, white box, as seen in Figure 3.7. Each of these slices is composed of the number
of points you specified in the “number radii/side” parameter in the Body Data box (see the section
“The Body Data Box” above for more information on this). Since most designs warrant the
maximum of nine radii per side, each of your slices will probably be composed of nine points.
Figure 3.7: The Cross-Sections box
When building your model, Plane Maker will stitch these slices together, so all the cross-sections
together will form a complete aircraft body.
We’ve been referring to each of the gridded white boxes as containing a “slice” of the fuselage.
In reality, they each contain a half-slice. The nine points (or however many radii/side you have set)
seen here compose the right side of a slice; they will me mirrored by another nine points on the left
side, for a total of eighteen (or so) points to compose a “full” slice.
Up to twelve of these half-slices are shown at any one time; if you have set more than twelve
“stations” (as described in the section “The Body Data Box” above), you can use the left and right
arrows to cycle through the slices not seen. These arrows are highlighted in red boxes in Figure 3.8.
Let’s dissect each cross-section view—each “station”—in detail.
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 3.9, the slice is located