Helper Shapes

These are exactly what they say they are - regular shapes that ADE generates to help designers place aprons, taxiways and so on.   They  

• are regular objects in ADE and are saved in the project file.  

• are drawn on the top of everything.  

• can be re-sized, rotated and moved

• hollow so you can select what is under them.   To select a helper shape put the cursor on the edge, make sure you can see the tooltip and then click.

 

Options for shapes are Circle, Ellipse, Rectangle, Square, Triangle and polygon

 

Adding Helper Shapes

• Right Click and select Add Helper Shape.   A small dialog will open:

 

 

Select the shape type you want.  

• Circles are constrained Ellipses

• Squares are constrained Rectangles.

• Triangles are based on a Rectangle where the base is the bottom of the rectangle and the point is in the center of the top of the rectangle

• Polygons are based on a circle and can have between three and 16 sides.   Thus it is possible to create an isosceles triangle or square using a polygon.   Polygons are constrained so will resize equally in both dimension (as per a circle)

The dimension setting options will change depending on the shape type selected.   Selecting a rectangle with a width of 50 meters and a height of 150 meters results in this:

 

 

 

Select the helper shape to work on it.   The following actions can be taken

• Drag it to move it

• Delete it when done with it

• Increase width: Ctrl + Left Arrow. For constrained shapes this changes both dimensions

• Increase height: Ctrl + Up Arrow. For constrained shapes this changes both dimensions

• Decrease width: Ctrl + Left Arrow. For constrained shapes this changes both dimensions

• Decrease height: Ctrl + Down Arrow. For constrained shapes this changes both dimensions

• Rotate.   Alt + Mouse Wheel or Ctrl + Alt + Mouse Wheel or select it and drag the handle

 

 

• Make bigger: Ctrl + Numeric Pad Plus

• Make Smaller: Ctrl + Numeric Pad Minus

 

Helper Shapes have a minimum size in any dimension of 1m.   Undo/Redo is not active on helper shapes but you can undo Adding or deleting s shape. Use the helper shape as a guide.   For complex curves etc a series of ellipses may work very well.

 

NOTE To create multiple aprons the same shape first create your shape and then make an apron from it (see below).   You can then move the shape and make another apron, and so on