Realistic Cities For Dummies

[smileymk]

OK then, let's do the final planning for Mapleford.

Lesson 3 - Final Planning

In this lesson we're going to adapt our preliminary plan to fit the terrain, like we did in the previous project, and we're also going make a paper copy of it which we can use when we're building.
I'm going to go through this pretty quickly as most of the content in this lesson should be familiar to you from Project 2, Lesson 5.

So without further haste, let's get going. We're going to create our final plan on the Overview bird's-eye image we took from the Terraformer in Lesson 2. Why? Simply because it's there, it's in proportion with our region (which will make it much easier to follow our plan), and it displays terrain contours more clearly than the game does.
Essentially, the main aim here is to transfer your paper plan onto the Overview, but making adjustments for the terrain and city tile arrangements. I think the best way to explain this is to show you the final plan for Mapleford first and summarise after, so here you go:


Now I want you to compare this plan with the master plan shown to you in Lesson 1:




You can see some important similarities and some equally important differences. Let's go over those now:

- Note the use of consistent colour schemes on all maps, and how I have used the same colours for the same things throughout (with a couple of exceptions on the final plan which were made to ensure the features could be seen over the Overview image). It's extremely important to maintain a consistent system in the way you mark features across all of your plans, because if you chop and change systems, you will get confused and have a hard time following your plans.

- I've managed to fit all of the important features onto the final plan, whereas we had multiple images in our preliminary plans. Generally speaking, you want to be referring to as few plans as possible when building cities. Just the final plan plus a few diagrams of interchanges/airports/etc. will suffice and make your planning very easy to follow without having to trawl through lots of sheets of paper.

- Notice how I've changed the course of some transport lines so that they go around hills rather than over them. As a rule, changes in colour on the Overview mean gradients, and you don't want to be running transport lines, especially railways and motorways, up steep hills. The mining district provides the clearest example of me routing roads according to terrain, so have a look at that area on both plans and you'll see what I mean.

- For clarity, I've indicated landmarks on the final plan by numbers. You don't have a lot of room to annotate a final plan, so you have to be economical. We will know what each landmark is from our preliminary plans and from notes we will write when we put the final plan onto paper.

- Remember that bridges over water must be straight and in line with the grid (roads, railways and avenues can have diagonal bridges, and we will cover building these later on in the project). Bridges cannot cross city tile borders, so keep that in mind. Light rail lines are an exception, since with light rail we can simply transition to subway and drag the tube line wherever we please.

- Note on the final plan I've added or repositioned stations so that each tile has public transport coverage. As an example, take a look at the tile below the northeast corner tile, where the castle is. You can see there is a metro station in that tile on the final plan that isn't on the preliminary plans. I've added this station so that the metro line gets some use in this tile - due to game limitations your Sims cannot commute over more than two city tiles, so you need to plan your public transport system with this in mind.

OK, I think that's everything, so let's save the plan and put it onto paper so that we can use it.
We're going to do this on Word, like we did last time. Open a new document and insert the image of the plan:


(If you don't know how to do this, go to Insert -> Picture and find your image in the Explorer window that appears.)

We want to move this image to the top of the document and make it spread across the width of the page. But if you try to move it, it won't let you.
The solution is to change the text wrapping to Behind Text. On Word 2010, this is done by selecting the image, and then clicking Wrap Text -> Behind Text, which will be on the middle-right of the big menu at the top:


On older versions of Word, you will need to right-click the image, then choose Wrap Text -> Behind Text in the menu that appears.

Now we can reposition and resize the image so it's at the top and uses the whole width of the page. If you don't know this already, you click-drag the image to reposition it and you click-drag the circle at the bottom-right of the picture to resize it, holding the Shift key whilst doing so to keep the image in proportion:


You can see there's a big white space at the bottom of the page. We are going to use this space to make additional notes that will provide us with extra detail in our plan. These notes will, in this case, need to include a key for our landmarks (remember we just numbered them on the final plan for clarity), so let's do that now.
First job is to create a text box. You need to go to Insert -> Shapes -> Text Box, like you see below:


Now drag out the text box so that it's the length of the white space going down and about a quarter of the width of the page. Now enter text into the box explaining the landmark represented by each number. This just needs to be a simple numbered list and does not need to be any more elaborate. You can (and will probably need to) use extra text boxes to create additional columns for your list if necessary. Your font size should be large enough to read but small enough so that you leave space for extra notes. Here I've used Arial, size 10 to write the list, which works just fine for me:


And that's it! Our final plan is now ready to print off and use in the game.

So that's it for this lesson, and for our planning and preparation. It's time to get building. The next lesson will be on oil-fired power stations.

See you there,
Chris

[Swordmaster]

Plans always capture my attention. This one looks like a cool plan to me. You have plenty of possibilities with this setup.


Cheers
Willy

[Kl408]

This is looking absolutely fantastic.. I wish I had the time and the talent to make create and plan such an awesome looking region. The time in planning the region alone would mean it would be months before I could start on construction.

Would you mind terribly if I stole your planning and try to build along. It would go a long way in helping me understand the simulation better..

Willem

[CharlieLord]

A big challenge you've set yourself here smiley! The plans look awesome, and I can't wait to see what you can create

[smileymk]

Hey guys. It's a beautiful day here in England, so let's crack on and get down to business.

Swordmaster: Thank you. I'm quite satisfied with the plan (and quite enjoy seeing plans myself), and you're right about the potential possibilities. I'm confident that Mapleford will be interesting to build, and I just hope that you guys find the construction process interesting to follow.

Kl408: Thnaks for the kind words. Let me reassure you that it does not take very long to plan a region. Once you have an idea of what you want to do, it usually only needs a couple of hours, if that, to turn it into a concept. Adapting it to fit the terrain is quite a quick job as well.
Unfortunately, turning your plan into reality can indeed take a very long time, particularly if you put a lot of detail into it (which you should). But it's a labour of love and time well spent.
In response to your question, feel free to try and build along. And please don't hesitate to put a couple of pictures on here if you need some feedback or advice.

CharlieLord: You should see my side project Napier (a 14x14 large tile region), now that's a big challenge ;) Of course Mapleford is a big project and will take some effort to create, but I'm ready for it, and I hope you guys are too. It will be worth the proverbial blood, sweat and tears when it's all done, I know it will.

Now, we've got a 100-square-mile region to build a major city on. Are you ready? Then let's get started.

Lesson 4 - Oil-Fired Power Stations

Firstly, why oil? Because in Project 1 we went for natural gas as our power source for the region, and in Project 2 we went for coal, so it made sense to use a third major fossil fuel, oil, this time around.
And yes, we are still using a fossil fuel source. Unfortunately, nuclear fusion and hydrogen are still a long way off, so we'll have do make do with good old hydrocarbons for now.

Let's get going. Begin by placing the building, ensuring your choice has enough power to service your entire region, and give it road access:


Yes, it's the same building as the one we used in Project 2, but that doesn't matter. It looks like the main buildings I saw when looking up real-life oil power stations on Google Maps, and it features the chimney that seems to be a feature of these places.
The main building might be exchangeable between different power sources, but the next feature to be built certainly isn't - the oil storage tanks:


You need to choose the location of these storage tanks carefully - they need to be close to your supply point (which in this case is going to be a rail terminal). Remember to leave space for oil pipes.
The lots used here are the tanks provided in NBVC's Modular Oil Port set (on the right) and a gas power station by Gascooker (at the top) which I was unable to find on the STEX but which will be there somewhere. We'll just have to pretend that the gas storage tanks actually store oil.
Oh, and remember to leave space for oil pipes.

Having done this, let us build the oil pipes and the rail terminal that will form the supply source for our power station. To do this we're going to use the pipes contained in the NBVC Modular Oil Port set together with the large lot in the NBVC Tank Car Filling Station download. The only requirements are that your oil terminal should look like an oil terminal - i.e. have suitable gantries to collect the oil like you see below, and that the terminal should be placed as close as possible to the storage tanks:


I've indicated which pipe pieces you need to use in my annotations. Note how I've not left any space between any feature of the power plant, which brings me to an important point.

It's really important to remember to build the power station as compactly as possible when building it in a city. In previous projects we built our power stations in open country and hence had a lot more space to play with. Here, the power station is in the industrial heartland of a major city and close to a major port as well as main roads, railway lines and metro lines. Every tile of space is precious here and we can't afford to waste anything.

With that in mind, let's turn our attention to the access to the power station, for both road and rail. We need to build security gates at every road entrance to our power station complex, and in addition, we need to provide the rail terminal with connections to the main freight line, which is planned to run parallel to the terminal on our right. We also need to build a suitably-sized car park.
Now, just because the terminal lot doesn't feature smooth-curve points doesn't mean we shouldn't use smooth-curve points to build the terminal approach. This is a case of using parallel single-dual rail and orthogonal - FARR points, as shown below. Remember we are trying to keep the setup as compact as possible:


You can see why we insisted on using smooth-curve points here. The result is very visually appealing. However, this is not a lesson on railways, so let us continue with our power station.
And yes, we are going to mod those security gates later on in the project so that only one street goes through them rather than two.

The next obvious feature that we need to build is the transformers, so let's do that now. The lot you use is, as always, a matter of personal preference, but unless it's a big one, you're going to need to build multiple lots to get a transformer system of an appropriate size:


But this presents us with a small detailing problem, circled in red. You can see that vehicles and a shed are positioned on the transformer lot, there is a concrete driveway, but the vehicles and shed are on grass. It would look better if they were on asphalt instead. Fortunately, we can use an asphalt path MMP to fill the area with asphalt, as far as the game will allow:


The lots at the back are still an issue, but this can be dealt with using the Lot Editor. That, however, is something for a later lesson.

This enhancement may seem overly pernickety to you. But this is how pernickety you have to be in order to achieve the very high standards of realism that we are aiming to produce in this project. So you'll be seeing a lot more small enhancements like this as we progress through the project, and I'm afraid you'll just have to get used to it. We're building it anyway, so why not build it to the best of our ability?

OK, so what's next? Let's put a snack van next to the car park to serve hungry workers:


Now we can build a security fence around our power station complex. Be sure to wrap it tightly around the perimeter of the complex, leaving no space wasted:


It may look at first like I've disregarded the need not to waste space by leaving one tile free next to the transformers (circled in red above), but it's not wasted space, because in that gap we're going to start our power lines.

We need to supply power to the whole region and beyond, and that means running power lines to all 4 edges of the city. I like to have one line per direction (i.e. one line going north, one line going east, etc.), and I like to keep a symmetrical pattern of pylons where they fan out from the transformers, purely because it looks good:


You will usually need to run multiple lines in the same direction for a little bit, like the north and east lines both going north in the above picture, which is done because we want the eastern power line to go over land, and directly east of the plant is sea. In this case, it's visually pleasing to place the lines so that the pylons are in line with each other, like you see with the two middle lines in the above image.
Oh, and remember that you have to drag the power lines into the power station rather than out from it. For some strange reason, the game will let you drag power lines one way over the security fence but not the other.

Now you can drag the power lines to the edges of your city. In our case, the south and west lines are easy, but the other two lines reach an obstacle:


The problem is simple - we have to get the power lines across the river. But we have to do it in a realistic and aesthetically pleasing way. To see this, let me first show you how not to drag power lines over water:


Not only do we have those ugly yellow things on the power lines, but we also have a pylon in the middle of the water. When did you last see a pylon placed in the middle of a water body? I certainly haven't.
So we need to construct this crossing more carefully. The trick is to position the lines so that the pylons are on land (to avoid the yellow things showing up), and the crossing is as short as possible (to avoid pylons in the water). Doing this produces a much better-looking crossing:


That looks a lot better, doesn't it? Now you can repeat the process for the second line, making sure to position the pylons so that they line up neatly with the first pylons for a neat effect:


Now we have crossed the obstacle and can continue to drag the lines unhindered. Notice here we've diverted the course of the power lines to keep them as far away as possible from the airport we plan to build to the east, since very-low-flying aircraft and power lines are a disaster waiting to happen:


Diverting the power line course means that the aircraft will be higher up when they pass over the lines, which will make landings and takeoffs at Mapleford Airport much safer when we come to build that airport.

And with that, our power station complex is complete. Let's take a look at the finished product:


The power station is very compact and yet still looks very good indeed. It's a fitting picture to end this lesson on.

The next item of business is Mapleford's water source, so next lesson we will be looking at pumping stations.

See you next time,
Chris

[Harry29]

Wow! That looks very realistic. What security gates are you using?

[Kl408]

Wow Chris, Have you looked at the project you have undertaken and have you compared it to the first post you just did??

It's gonna take you to at least page 367 before you will complete this one ;-))

Great start.
No luck yet in finding all of the props that you used but i'm getting there

PS "Finished product" picture is missing

[smileymk]

Hey guys.

Harry29: Thank you. The security gates are the transit-enabled gates found in this Maximum Security Fence kit, and the chainlink fence is CSGdesign's Chainlink Fence (you have to register on the site to download it, although I'm pretty sure I got it from either the STEX or LEX). They are extremely good, the only drawback being the 2 streets on the gate rather than 1, but that's an easy thing to sort out and we'll be doing that in a later lesson.

Kl408: Firstly, thanks for pointing out that the last picture on Lesson 4 didn't show up originally - it has since been reuploaded and works fine now. Strangely enough, it did show up on the preview, so I guess I'll just have to check the actual post to ensure all the images are correctly displayed.
Secondly, yes, this a big project and could easily take a couple of years or more to complete, but don't let the scale of what we're doing intimidate you. Rather, embrace it and be inspired by it. You've no doubt seen pictures of huge regions people have developed to very high standards. It may seem like a world away from your level, but it really isn't. This MD is here to prove exactly that.

Now then, let's give Mapleford a water supply.

Lesson 5 - Pumping Stations

In this lesson, as the title suggests, we are going to create a pumping station in the northwest corner tile of Mapleford, in accordance with our plan, which will pump water from the river to service the residents of the city. We will also integrate into the facility sewage works, taking in waste water from the city and cleaning it up before pumping it back into the river.

It seems like a simple enough task, but we have a logistical problem to solve before construction on the pumping station can commence. In SC4, water facilities will not distribute water unless they are powered. And if you look at the plans, our pumping station is about 8.5 miles away from the power station. Getting power there will mean running power lines through 6 city tiles, including the tile containing the power station and pumping station.

First, we need to construct the supply line. This is a very easy task - it is literally a case of constructing a power line along as direct a route as possible, making allowances for the terrain - we do not need or want power lines going over water or hills:


I've marked the route in grey so you can see it more clearly, and circled the power station in red so you can see the distance we have to distribute power over (the pumping station will be in the northwest city tile). Notice how I've continued the power lines to the edge of the region even though we're outside of the Mapleford city boundary by then. We do this because there is a world beyond Mapleford, and it needs a power supply. Hence it is necessary to run power lines to the world beyond. The same goes for transport networks.

There are, however, a couple of details you need to be aware of when constructing power lines. Firstly, diagonals. These need to be dragged perfectly diagonally, i.e. for every 1 tile you go up, you need to go one tile across:


This may sound really obvious, but you will notice that you get extra pylons if you don't drag perfectly diagonally, which will look unsightly. Notice here that it is possible to drag diagonally directly from the first pylon in the next city tile, and this is done by dragging diagonally from the first pylon and deleting the surplus pylon (which will be two tiles in orthogonally from the first pylon) afterwards.

The second consideration to be aware of with power lines is the spacing between pylons. The game places pylons every 10 tiles when you drag power lines normally. This is a good spacing, but there will be some situations, most notably at the edge of city tiles, where it is all too easy to get two pylons being built very close to each other. This doesn't look very nice and certainly isn't realistic. Let's take the above picture as an example - how much better does that look than the default setup for power lines entering a city tile, where one pylon is two tiles away from the next?
To ensure a good spacing between power lines, I like to follow what I call the 7-tile rule. It's as simple as it sounds - it says that each power pylon should be at least 7 tiles away from the previous one:


This applies both orthogonally and diagonally. Diagonally, you count 1 tile as being 1 tile up and 1 tile across. At city tile boundaries, you may need to move some earlier pylons back to keep to the 7-tile rule. It's a simple task to do this and it's well worth the effort.
Neighbour connections pose a small problem, of course, since if you delete that second pylon it automatically takes the first one with it. However, dealing with this problem was covered in Project 2, Lesson 11 Part 2, so now might be a good time to have a look at that if you've forgotten the methods behind maintaining a realistic spacing of power lines at neighbour connections.

Once you've done built your power lines, you now need to set up the neighbour deals to get the power shipped out. This must be done tile-by-tile in turn, starting from the power station and working outwards along the route of the power lines. You guys know how to set up neighbour deals so I won't go into details here. Rather, let's get cracking with our pumping station.

The first task is to place the pump buildings, making sure to place them close enough to the power line so that they recieve the power they need to work. The choice of lot is up to you:


Hold on a minute - I used the plural 'buildings', and there's only one building, the reserve pump, here. Well fear not, because we're going to add two more pumps (the main ones), but we need to create some fake road access for them first. All will become clear once the lots are placed.
Start by dragging two tiles of street out from the main access road. Here we need to do this in two places, because we're building two lots. You then need to place a SAM starter piece on each two-tile street such that the cursor is over the first tile and the stub points away from the access road:


Once you have done this, you will see that the first tile of the two streets disappears and you're left with two lonely stubs and two apparently useless T junctions:


But the T junctions are far from useless. Let's delete those stubs and put the main pump lots in place of them:


Ah, it makes sense now, doesn't it? You can see we have a couple of open gates on our pump lots, and we have created fake road connections to them so drivers can access the lot without having to drive over the pavement. This neat little trick, available to us thanks to the latest NAM, has saved us from having to transit enable the lot to give it road access. Useful isn't it? It's a powerful technique that we're going to be using a lot in this project, and even a couple more times in this very lesson (can you spot where I've used it in the pictures below?)

Now, this pump is going to use water from the river as its supply source. But would you want to drink fresh water directly from a river? Thought not. Goodness knows what's in it.
Hence the water must be processed before it can be pumped - this is a job for some water treatment plants:


We have three large tanks, two small tanks and one rectangular tank. For a major water facility, this is the equipment you need. Notice how all the lots have road access - in particular, the rectangular tank has been placed so that the vans on the lot are parked next to the road.
These will act as treatment facilities for both water going into the city and sewage coming out, which after being treated will be returned back to the river.

We now have a fully functional water facility. Finish it off with a couple of small car parks and a perimeter security fence, as well as a transformer to get the voltage down from national grid levels (400kW in the UK) to the level needed to operate a water pump (in the order of a few thousand volts):


I forgot to do it here, but you should move the power pylons such that there is a pylon next to the transformer, to avoid having to build more wire than necessary. Don't forget to keep to the 7-tile rule when doing this.

OK, the very last job is to construct two culverts to simulate the pipes taking in water from the river and feeding treated waste water back into the river. I'm using the RRP Rural Culverts to do this. The culverts need to be placed so that they face the water (obviously) and that they are opposite different treatment tanks, since one will be processing water to ship to the city and one will be cleaning sewage. If possible, place the culverts in the water, and if not, as close to the water as possible:


Good. Our water facility is now finished - it remains only to distribute water back to the power station.

This is identical to building the power connection, only we're working with water and we're going the other way. Drag a water pipe through the tiles you built the power line through:


As with the power, you now need to do the neighbour deals for each tile in turn, this time starting with the tile containing the pumping station. You may need to go back and forth several times to ensure your power station is getting enough water.
When done, simply run the pipes to the power station and you should get this blue area on the screen, indicating the power station is receiving water:


And that, as they say, is that.

The next lesson will concentrate on one of Mapleford's waster disposal facilites. We're going to build a garbage dock. It will be a lot more fun than it sounds, trust me.

See you then,
Chris

[Kl408]

OK, got it, easy stuff, pffff : I knew that 

Me thinks it's gonna be a lot of work to keep up actually, but hey: it's fun, it really is...

One small thing just to clarify: if you put down a water treatment facility, does that mean it cleans all of the water connected to it by pipes?? I mean, does it matter in terms of functionality where I put it??? 

[smileymk]

Hi everyone.

Kl408: To my knowledge, it does matter where you put it. A water treatment facility in SC4 simply reduces water pollution by a specified amount over a specified radius, both of which are determined by the descriptor file for the building concerned. I don't know if it even needs to be connected to the water pipe system to function, but given that the Maxis offering has connectors we can assume that it does. Of course, it definitely needs power to function.

Now, lesson time.

Lesson 6 - Garbage Docks

For this lesson you will need the PEG Garbage Dock. It provides an effective and aesthetically pleasing form of waste management, and saves us having to dedicate an area of Mapleford to a large unsightly landfill as with the garbage dock we can just ship the city's rubbish to some place else, much like New York famously used to ship its waste to a landfill on Staten Island.

But before we can build the dock, we have a cosmetic issue to deal with first concerning the sea:


You can see these small beach-like areas in the middle of the sea where it isn't deep enough. This looks terrible and needs to be corrected.
Fortunately, it's a simple fix. Going into God Mode and applying single clicks of the Shallow Valley tool will get rid of those 'beaches' for good:


Much better. We're now ready to build our garbage dock.

Well, what are you waiting for? Place down both small and large garbage docks. Bear in mind that these lots are transit-enabled so you need to place the lots such that the land end of the lot is completely over land (it is possible to place parts of that end over water) and that the dock end is completely over water so that the boats don't have to beach to get to the dock. You will need to build multiple docks as we're serving a big old city here:



We can now progress to add street and rail connections. The rail can go straight out as you see below, but the docks are best given road access by a street running parallel to the docks. Notice the use of STR here as double track access would be overkill, and also how I've left gaps between the dock lots and level crossings in order to provide room for locomotives to stop when shunting wagons into the dock:


You can see that I've left out the second level crossing. This is because to build it we have to shove an STR starter piece into a very tight spot. We're trying to wedge a level crossing in between a smooth STR curve and a transition to dual track, and we don't want a brief section of double track appearing in between these two features.
So here's what we do in this situation. Demolish the street at the site of the crossing and put in its place an STR starter piece with the stub facing towards the rail curve:


The tile of rail where the cursor is will duly disappear like it does with the SAM starter pieces, leaving a stub of STR coming out of the curve. Now you can place a dual track - STR transition piece and drag all of the rest:


Now let's turn our attention to how we're going to power these docks. We need to put a transformer in place to reduce the voltage to an appropriate level, and run power lines to it.
This will require the techniques used in the previous lesson to build power lines. Here we need to drag diagonally from the first pylon after the neighbour connection from the tile above, then go south to meet the transformer, remembering to place a pylon directly next to the transformer whilst obeying the 7-tile rule. Afterwards, we can demolish that annoying extra pylon that appears 3 tiles into the city (you know what I mean) and drag out a proper power line to the tile to the west from the first pylon:


We now need to create road connections to the neighbouring city tiles to allow garbage to be delivered from those tiles to the tile containing the dock. This means building a road to the west, in accordance with our plan, and a street connection to the north:


We don't want to build a road connection to the north just yet because we want the raod to run parallel to and close to the port, which we have yet to build. And yes, the port does have to come first here, simply because it's a big structure and we need to leave space for it. However, we have room to connect our rail line to the one we built in Lesson 4, so we've done that here.

It's now time to build a couple more accessories to finish off the complex. Let's start with a processing unit, which will act as the office for the complex, a storage facility, and somewhere to check certain items to ensure nothing illegal is shipped out:


The lot chosen is the recycling centre found in Paeng's Waste Management Set. It has the major advantage of being a functional waste disposal unit in its own right, boosting the total carrying capacity of the complex.

The second accessory to be built is rather more mundane and predictable. Yep, it's yet another security fence:


You'll have to pretend the fence extends to gate up the rail accesses and extends into the water.

The final touch is to add some concrete fillers to all of the empty spaces in the complex to give it a more urban and industrial feel:


And that is our complex complete, and looking pretty darn good if I say so myself. We now need to go into the tile to the north and connect up our streets and railways:


Note the use of a random street route, as we are building this street through an industrial area. Also note the use of the 45-degree rail curves as opposed to the orthogonal-FARR-diagonal setup we like to use when building rail curves. We do this to save space, and can afford to do so since this line exclusively serves port traffic and hence the trains will be travelling along this line at very low speeds. Another thing to note is our use of FLUPs to take the street under the rail line. Whilst some level crossings are unavoidable in rail lines running to the docks, we don't want to build level crossings unless we absolutely have to.

OK, with that done, it remains only to set up the requisite neighbour deals and ensure that they are in good order:


As you can see, our neighbour deal is done, and hence our lesson is done as well.

We've had our warm-up this lesson, so in the next lesson we'll be getting serious about docks. It's time to build Mapleford's seaport.

See you then,
Chris

[yochananmichael]

seriously another AWESOME update chris, can't wait for the seaport!!!

[Frenchie1985]

 

That's all I have to say about that.

[Kl408]

Building along and managing quite nicely to my surprise :-) Just those transformers, have not been able to find those yet but I'll get there in the end..
Keep this coming please, great stuff

[smileymk]

Hey guys.

yochananmichael: Thank you. I hope you find this coming lesson as entertaining as the last.

Frenchie1985: I'm flattered. All I can say is thanks.

Kl408: I'm pleased to hear that you're having success building your own city and that you're beginning to realise that you can easily achieve high standards. It shows that this MD is doing exactly what it was created to do, which is both encouraging and pleasing to me.
Regarding the transformers, I'm afraid I've been unable to locate the ones I use despite extensive searching. However, nowhere did I say you had to use that particular transformer. There are plenty of other high-quality transformers on the exchanges, so I recommend browsing the exchanges, finding a transformer you like and using that instead. Not only will this save you time running a fine-tooth comb through the internet looking for one specific lot, it will also make your city more unique and original since you're using your preferred buildings rather than someone else's.

Now, who's ready to build a seaport?

Lesson 7 - Ports

I'm going to be straight with you. A seaport, especially one like what we're building with all the different kinds of terminals, is a lot of work. It requires a lot of small-scale terraforming, trying to squeeze big items into tight spots, some modding, and a good amount of persistence.
But, as with everything we do here, the end result is very satisfying indeed so it's well worth putting in the effort.

We are going to build 4 separate terminals - an oil port, a minerals/goods yard for export of minerals from the mines, a container port for general goods, and an international ferry terminal to transport passengers across the sea.

Let's start with the oil port. We're going to squeeze it in between the garbage dock and the edge of the city tile the garbage dock sits on.

First, place the dock lot, which in this case is the diagonal oil dock found in NBVC's Modular Oil Port:


Note how the dock has been placed so that it fits entirely within the city tile and doesn't interfere with any other docks, be they the garbage docks to the south or the minerals docks to the north we have yet to build. This is why we used the diagonal version here - the orthogonal equivalent simply doesn't fit into the space.

Is that it? Of course not - we have to provide some means of getting people and oil to the dock. This calls for an oil rail terminal as well as the standard access road. We'll also construct some storage tanks to bolster the handling capacity of the port:


The oil tanks in question are part of the Modular Oil Port set, if you're interested.

It seems like the next logical step is to connect everything up with oil pipes, but we first need to sort out the road and rail connections to the port.
The main road in the picture above needs to extend into the next city tile, and the railway needs to connect to the mainline to the west.
We could do this just by dragging a couple of level crossings out, but this is a bad idea as any shunting moves into the port will cause major congestion on the main road. It will also be more realistic and better-looking if we use STR rather than standard double-track rail for the rail connection, like we did when constructing the garbage docks.

One option is to take the road over the rail using the NAM puzzle pieces - but we don't have the space or the 7.5m transition pieces needed to do this realistically. The solution is to use FLUPs.

We can extend FLUPs over city tile boundaries in the same way we can extend streets over them. Start by creating an invisible connection (see the Suburbs lesson in Project 2 if you can't remember how to do this):


Now you need to place the rail lines over the top, making sure to place dual-STR transitions after the rail is clear of the path of the road:


Then the FLUP pieces go in. I had to demolish the oil rail terminal to make everything play nicely with everything else and avoid crashes, but we can put it back in afterwards:


Notice how we have put a FLUP under Ped Mall piece in the gap between the railway and the city tile border, as opposed to a grass or transparent texture. We do this because the concrete texture is more suited to the urban environment the underpass is situated in, and hence will look better once all the development is done.

We now have a fully functional underpass connection to the next city tile. We can simply put the rail terminal back into place (albeit one tile back from where it originally was) and we're all set:


Now we just have to connect the rail up to the mainline. Unfortunately, due to the space constraints, I had to sacrifice a smooth curve here:


The diagonal STR connection was made in the same way as the FLUP connection, but the diagonal STR filler piece was used as the 'anchor piece' at the edge of the city tile.
Regarding the lack of a smooth curve, we can get away with it because the trains will be travelling very slowly on this line, but still, the use of the standard dragged curve is a compromise that I've had to make to fit the railway into the space. Always use smooth curves when possible, only using the dragged curves when the trains will be travelling very slowly and there really is no room for a smooth curve.

We now need to complete the connection on the other side of the city boundary. As you probably know, the game continues networks 3 tiles into the next city tile at the point where the connection is built. In order to use our method of building connections with nonstandard networks, we need to trim this stub to 2 tiles:


Now we can apply our usual method of constructing neighbour connections for nonstandard networks to complete the extension into this city tile:


Notice how we've used the FLUP ramp piece as the 'anchor piece' for the road, and have managed to fit in a proper point for the rail line. It would have been nice to put in a crossover to allow trains to cross over to the leftmost track from the branch, but again, there wasn't the room. We can always build it further down the line.

With the connections complete, let's head back south to the tile with the oil port, and finish that off. We need to construct the oil pipes before we do anything else:


This is the same set of pipes as the one we used for the power station, so they should be familiar. Notice, in particular, how we've built the bridge over the road.

You'll also see that we've put in a few apparently useless connection to tank pieces (the ones with two pipes sticking out from the side of the main pipes). Why? Well, our oil terminal is served by rail, so why shouldn't it be served by road as well?
We can fill the space in between the pipes and the street with a lorry terminal to enable the oil port to be served by road. To do this, I've used the I-HT Open Area filler pieces (which are part of this set), together with a couple of walls from that package, and placed some MMP oil tankers on the tarmac:


That looks quite nice in my opinion. It's important to have your lorries pointing away from the pipes, towards the road, so that the tank is near the pipes. Because we're using MMP lorries this may take several attempts to get right, but it's important to persevere to get a satisfying result. Remember also that it's also a good idea to leave some bays empty, like you see above.

Now we need to have a look at the coastline. We can't leave it as it is because a beach-like coastline looks out of place in a port setting.

Instead, we will dress up the shoreline with a seawall. Here I'm using the NBVC Riprap Seawall, which looks good and can be placed anywhere you want it to go, but you can use your preferred seawall instead if you want:


You may need to do some minor terraforming with the Mayor Mode terrain tools to get rid of any bits of coastline that show up in between the seawalls and the water. If you need to do this, remember to use single clicks and hold down the CTRL key to minimise the brush size.

Now, these seawalls are an improvement, but we still have blank beach-like textures in between the walls and the oil port, which we need to sort out. There's also that space at the bottom of the port which is crying out to be filled with something.
That something is a portacabin and the blank beach-like textures need to be replaced by concrete textures. Unfortunately, we don't have a portacabin lot easily available to us and the game wouldn't let me paint MMP concrete textures over the transparent area of the riprap seawalls. Therefore, we're going to have to use Lot Editor to add a concrete base texture to the seawall and to create a portacabin lot.

In order to create these lots, we first need to know what we're using.
To modify the seawalls, we first need to find the base texture used in the oil port and I-HT filler lots (which if you notice use the same base texture). So let's open the I-HT filler in Lot Editor, go to the Base Texture tab, click on the texture and make a note of its name (underlined in red below):


We also need to find some portaloo and portable office props. To do this, we open lots which we know have these props, go to the Props tab and make a note of the name of the prop:




If you're interested, the portaloo used here can be found as a lot in the SNM Field Firing Range Base Set, and the office prop can be found in this Nexis Construction Site.

The seawall lot can now be created. Open up the straight riprap seawall lot in Lot Editor, go to the Base Texture tab and click Add Item. Then, reading off from the notes you made earlier, find the concrete base texture:


We know this is the right texture because the hexadecimal number identifying it matches the one we wrote down earlier. Now apply it to the seawall lot and click Save As (NOT Save - we still want the original seawall lot and will use it later):


Moving on to the portacabin lot, all we need to do here is simply add the relevant props to the I-HT filler lot and click Save As:


Of course, a proper portacabin would have been preferable but I was unable to find one, so this will have to do as a compromise. Should you know about any portacabin props, links would be appreciated.

Anyways, that's enough modding for now. Let's get back in the game and put our newly created lots into position:


You can see the difference that work in Lot Editor has made. You can see I've added a fake street connection and a couple of vehicles near the portacabin lot for added detail.

And with that, our oil port is complete, so let's have a look at what we've done so far:


But we are far from finished. We still have 3 terminals to build.

Let's move north to the next city tile and begin work on the minerals terminal. The first task is to place the docks. These particular docks are transit-enabled, so be sure to leave room to build the networks out from the docks:


These particular lots are the PEG Break Bulk Seaport and the PEG Break Bulk Dock.
You will almost certainly have to do some minor terraforming to be able to place these lots. Again, remember to make very small corrections.

Now it's time to build the rail access to these docks, remembering to use STR and smooth curves as far as possible. In accordance with the region plan, we also need to provide space for a road crossing:


It's also prudent to build a temporary power connection like you see above in order to avoid any problems occurring on that front. Notice how some rail sticks out at the southern end of the dock to provide a buffer but we do not have a connection to the neighbouring city - this is because if we did we would run into our oil port!

Now we need to add some storage units, which for the minerals terminal will consist of a couple of industrial lots featuring mineral piles, as well as a warehouse. It's also necessary to include a customs office to prevent any illegal goods from being imported into Mapleford, which we can simulate in SC4 using a small police station:


Finish off by completing the street connections, adding a security fence, placing seawalls where appropriate, and filling any open spaces with industrial fillers (concrete boxes, pallets and minerals are good, but not containers - save those for the container port!):


Notice in the top left corner we have used a roundabout to make a 90-degree sharp road curve more visually pleasing and justified. Look to the right side of the above picture as well, where you'll notice we haven't wrapped the security fence completely around the dock. This is because we're going to extend the fence to cover our container port as well.

Speaking of container ports, our minerals terminal is now finished, so let's get cracking on the container terminal.

We start off in exactly the same way as we did with the minerals terminal - by placing the docks, making minor adjustments to the terrain where necessary and remembering to leave room for transport connections:


These lots are the PEG Container Seaport and PEG Container Dock, but there are quite a few excellent container ports available on the exchanges, so find one you like and use it well.

Now, as with the minerals terminal, construct the rail leadouts, leaving room for any road crossings you might have planned:


You can see that the first leadout is a double-track line rather than the STR we've used everywhere else. This is because we're going to put a couple of small container terminals in, along with some container filler lots, for use as this terminal's storage facility. Remember to leave room for a customs office and security fence:


Now it's time to place the customs office and the security fence, continuing the fence on from the minerals terminal and wrapping it around the other end of the container port:


I've circled the security gate in red and the customs office in yellow to help you identify them. Note that we've placed the security gate right next to a sharp 90-degree road curve, in order to turn the curve into a junction to make the sharp turn more justified.

Now finish off by adding seawalls and fillers where appropriate. Don't worry about anything outside of the security fence - that's outside of the port and we'll deal with that when we do the industry for this tile:


That's a fine looking container port. Let's move on to the final part of Mapleford's port, the ferry terminal.

We're supposing that this is an international ferry terminal, so, as you might expect, we've got to do a little bit more than simply place a car ferry.

The choice of lot, as always, is everything. It needs to have a passenger terminal (or at least something that could be seen as a passenger terminal), at least one slipway to let cars on and off the boat, parking of some sort so that passengers have somewhere to put their vehicles whilst waiting for the ferry, and a lead-in for cars from the entrance to the boat. It should also be transit-enabled.
I found the WMP Truck Ferry to meet all of these requirements and look good at the same time, but there are bound to be other suitable lots, so choose your preferred lot:


Don't forget to provide power and water, as this lot can actually abandon if you don't.

We now need to build a one-way road running from the road to the ferry terminal for cars to access the terminal. Along this road we need to place a check-in area. Before you start ripping through the exchanges, a tool booth is a perfectly effective way to represent the check-in booths:


For arrivals, we need to construct a border control point to ensure everyone who tries to enter Mapleford does so legally. Border control points tend to be wider than check-in areas and easily attract longer queues, so we're going to build the exit road with OWR-3 instead of the standard two-lane one-way road, and use an OWR-3 tool booth (such as the one found here) together with a police kiosk as the border checkpoint:


Notice how the border checkpoint has been placed at the end of the road in order to give traffic room to queue up.

The rest is easy. Simply fill the space with a customs office, fillers and seawalls. You can also include a perimeter fence if you want, but you don't have to:


And with that, Mapleford International Port is now complete. Let's take a look at the 3 terminals we've built on this city tile:


There's something quite satisfying about that. We're done.

There's one more thing that takes up a lot of space that we need to build before we do anything else on this city tile. This thing, of course, is the airport, and therefore this is what we will be covering in the next lesson.

See you then,
Chris

[sc-4]

Thanks for all the work you're putting into this tutorial !

[veger]

Very nice tutorial, I learned lots of things (which is not hard, as I am to the game).
I did not try it on a (new) region yes, as I am not yet tired tinkering and messing with my current region, but I will follow your guides on a new region for sure as it seems a much nicer way of playing the game!

Now it it time to impatiently wait for your next lesson...

[Pioneer]

How did you get a street neighbor connection?

[Kl408]

I'm afraid I've been a little bit too optimistic about things going really well, something has gone wrong and I can't figure out for the life of me what is going on...
I can not make a deal on water and garbage between the power and the waste squares. Not up-down and not down-up... electricity is ok,4-4 is buying from 4-3 but garbage and water just will not show up in either squares neighbor deals? I've tried connecting a road instead of a street in case my street connection wasn't perfect but nope,wasn't it..
I'm stumped..

Any ideas??

[Kl408]

How did you get a street neighbor connection?

Try this
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=7350.0

[smileymk]

Hey guys. I've got a mammoth lesson coming up. But first...

sc-4: You're welcome. The effort is more than worth it, believe me.

veger: Firstly, welcome to SC4 Devotion! Secondly, thanks for taking the time to post such nice feedback. It is very much appreciated and continuing like this will stand you in good stead with the SC4D community. Thirdly, good luck with your new region when you get round to it. You'll have to put a lot of work into it, but it'll be worth it.

Pioneer: I'd also like to welcome you to SC4 Devotion. In response to your question, Project 2, Lesson 21 provides step-by-step instructions on making street neighbour connections.
The method can easily be adapted to make neighbour connections with almost any network - you just need to find a suitable 'filler' piece to go on the last tile to extend the network into the next city tile.

Kl408: That's weird, it works just fine for me. All I can suggest is to make sure that a) you have a water pipe route from your water facility to the waste tile running through the power tile, and b) there is a driving route from the docks in the power station tile to the garbage docks (you may need to put in an extra street or two). Also, I'd check your neighbour deals. The power station square has to have enough of a surplus of water for it to be able to sell to neighbouring tiles. I'd go through all the tiles in between the water facility and the power station, one by one, and see if I could get more water to the power station.
On another topic, if you want to add something to a post, then the proper forum ettiquette is to use the Modify post button which should appear at the top of each of your posts. Making a second post to add to your first is called 'double posting' and is frowned upon in internet forums.

And now, it's time to start what is, in terms of pictures at least, the longest lesson ever published on Realistic Cities for Dummies.

Lesson 8 - Airports

Before you start building an airport, you must ensure you have the right equipment. You will need all of the following:

- RMIP-2 Airport Set (this links to Volume 4, which has the previous 3 volumes as dependencies, making sure you download all of them)
- ACB VLT Terminals and Jets (this is Part 2 and has Part 1 as a dependency)
- TMIP Taxiway Improvement Pack

You can forget about making a realistic airport if you don't download these mods. They are like the NAM of airports.
In addition, you should also ensure you have as many aircraft gate/parking lots and MMP planes as possible. Searching the STEX will provide links to many useful downloads. The SCAG team have also made numerous 'plane at the gate' lots which are designed to work with the RMIP sets and are well worth downloading.

It's also vital you understand the task you face. The above packs are modular sets, and so your airport has to be built piece-by-piece. Because of this, even a small airport will take you a long time to build. As an example, the airport I'm about to take you through building required 5 days of work to build, as well as 78 pictures and 3 days of writing to document it in sufficient detail. And, as you will see, it is only a medium-size airport. Attempting to create something on the scale of Heathrow or JFK will take a good couple of weeks at least.

Now before we begin, I want to change your perception about airports.
If I asked you to name an international airport, or indeed an airport of any kind, you'd probably respond with something like Heathrow, JFK, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Chicago O'Hare or some other major world airport.
However, this is an international airport:


As you can probably tell from the labelling, this is Dortmund airport in Germany. It's tiny, with only a handful of gates and a single runway just 2km long, but there are scheduled flights from Dortmund to London, Zagreb and other destinations, so it's an international airport.
This illustrates two important things about airports. The first is their size. You don't have to recreate JFK to make a convincing international airport. Don't get me wrong, airports are big things, but they can be as small as Dortmund airport above.
The second is the number of runways. The vast majority of airports make do with just one runway. In the UK, for example, there are only two major airports with multiple runways (Heathrow and Gatwick), and they only have two each. Multiple runways are only appropriate for the biggest airports.

With that in mind, let's begin construction. In case you need reminding, here's the plan for Mapleford airport again:


As you can see, we have taken the advice outlined above and opted for just the one runway, together with the necessary taxiways, terminals and accessories. A city of Mapleford's size doesn't really justify building anything bigger.

Seeing as the runway is a quite important part of the airport, it makes sense to start with that. We start by dragging a straight road to mark out where we want to build the runway:


This is a good time to consider how long you want the runway to be. Many people get this one wrong, and build runways that are either too big or too small for the purpose they serve.
To give you a general idea, a runway 2 miles (10,520 ft) long will take pretty much every plane ever made, with very few exceptions. Dortmund's runway is 2km (6,562 ft) long, and takes A319 passenger jets. The famous Princess Juliana Airport on the Carribbean island of St. Maarten has a single runway just 7,546 ft (just under 1.5 miles) long, yet Boeing 747s and A330s land there safely every day.
To be more specific, here's a set of minimum lengths for runways depending on the types of planes that land on them:

Small planes (prop planes and business jets): 5,000ft (95 tiles)
Small passenger jets (A320s/B737s/etc.): 6,500ft (124 tiles)
Large passenger jets (B747s/B777s/A340s/A380s/etc.): 8,500ft (162 tiles)
Large cargo planes (B777 freighters/military transport planes/etc.): 10,000ft (191 tiles)

Bear in mind that these are minimums, and putting in an extra few tiles of runway as a safety margin is never a bad idea.
You might be wondering how to convert feet into SC4 grid squares, and I'm happy to say it's a simple calculation which is easily explained:

Proposition: There are exactly 20,000/381 feet in an SC4 grid square.[/b]

Proof: One inch is exactly 2.54cm, so 1 foot = 12 inches = 12 x 2.54cm = 30.48cm. 100cm = 1m, so 30.48cm = (30.48 / 100)m = 0.3048m. A grid square in SC4 is exactly 16m long, so this is equivalent to (16 / 0.3048) feet.
(If you're wondering why we divide instead of multiplying, it's because the statement '1 foot = 0.3048m' is equivalent to saying 'take the distance in feet and multiply it by 0.3048 to get the distance in metres'. In other words, we multiply to convert from feet to metres. We want to go the other way (i.e. metres to feet), so we need to do the opposite of multiplying by 0.3048, which is dividing by 0.3048. I hope it's clear now.)
So, 1 SC4 grid square = 16/0.3048 feet. Multiplying top and bottom by 10000 gives 1 SC4 grid square = 160,000/3,048 feet, which simplifies to 20,000/381 feet (dividing top and bottom by 8).
Since we started with an exact conversion, this means that there are exactly 20,000/381 feet in an SC4 grid square, which is what we were trying to prove.

?

For Mapleford's runway, as you can see from the picture above, I dragged out 180 tiles of road. (You can tell because it costs $180 = $1 per tile. My slope mod also reduces the cost of road building to $1 per tile - it's normally $10 per tile, so for most of you 180 tiles of road will cost $1800.) Multiplying this by 20000/381 gives a runway length of 9,449 ft, which is more than enough for the largest planes the airport serves (B777s and A330s).

Once you've marked out your runway, you need to find the halfway point of the runway, which is easily done by dragging out roads. You then need to make some sort of marker at the halfway point to indicate it is the halfway point. We'll see the reason for this shortly:


Now it's time to build the runway. Let's start from the left side. I think the easiest way to explain this bit is to show you all of the pieces that go into building a runway, as well as how far they should be apart, so I'll do that:




(The PAPI lights should be 1 tile away from the runway. I meant to include that in the above picture but clearly didn't.)

A few points to note here. First, the displaced threshold, indicated by the white arrows. Aircraft can only use that bit of the runway for taking off, not for landing. There are power lines to the west of the airport, and so using the displaced threshold means that planes cross the power lines at a higher, and hence safer, altitude. And don't worry about the big planes having less room to land on - this isn't a big issue as our runway is still long enough, and planes require much less runway when landing because there's a lot less fuel on board than there is when the plane is taking off, hence the plane is much lighter on landing and hence can slow down more quickly.
Secondly, runway pieces for this side of the runway should be placed with the preview arrow facing west. We'll see the reason for that later. For taxiway connections and the half-pieces that go with them, the arrow should be pointing towards the centreline of the runway, so that they are the right way round.
Thirdly, why have we used an 09 designator? Why not some other number? There's plenty in the RMIP set to choose from.

The answer is that there is a system used to number runways. The runway number is determined by taking the magnetic heading of the runway in degrees, rounding it to the nearest multiple of 10, and dividing the result by 10. (Note that runways facing north are numbered 36, not 0).
Our runway points east, which corresponds to a magnetic heading of 090 (bearings are always written in this 3-figure format). Hence the runway is numbered 09, and so we use the 09 designator piece.

Note: As stated in the pictures, if you're building a US runway you need to use the 9 designator piece instead. The 09 designator is to be used everywhere else.

The following diagram illustrates which runway number is to be used for each direction the runway can point:


At bigger airports, you might want to build parallel runways. We're not doing that here, but if you decide to put parallel runways in place at your airport, be aware that a) you can have a maximum of 3 runways parallel to each other, and b) you need to add one of either the L, C or R designators directly behind the runway number, in between the number and the threshold, to each of your runways.
The following diagram illustrates the correct way to number parallel runways:


Now, having done one end, it's time to do the other end. This is a similar process, except we need to use a 27 designator since this direction points west, the preview arrow needs to point right, and we're using an SSALS piece instead of the longer ALS piece because of lack of space - indeed after building this I decided to replace the long ALS for runway 09 with the short one:


The next thing to do is the halfway point, where we will put a T-junction to a taxiway, using the Runway-Taxiway T-Intersection piece as well as find out precisely why the preview arrow orientation is important. Look and learn:


Now you can see why we've used different runway half sections and arrow orientations on different bits of the runway. The yellow 'flicks' that you see on the sides of the runway need to point to the halfway point on the runway. And to do this, we need to place our pieces with the preview arrow pointing in the correct direction, which is outlined in the above picture and, as you can see, is dependent on the piece's position on the runway.

The rest of the runway can now be filled in. Remember to include an appropriate number of taxiway exits (which will vary according to the length and purpose of your runway), including both straight and diagonal exits, and make sure the preview arrows are pointing the right way:


Looking good. Let's finish it off by placing some runway distance signs, which indicate to pilots the length of usable runway left:


The signs give the distance in thousands of feet, so they need to be placed every 1000 feet along both sides of the runway, measuring from the appropriate threshold - the signs should be on the left from the pilot's perspective.
You should be able to work out from the maths we did earlier that 1,000ft equates to 19 tiles, so this is how far apart you should place your distance signs. You can either count squares or use roads to mark out the correct distance.

Our runway is done, so it's time to demolish the marker road and focus on the taxiways. We're going to have a taxiway running parallel to the runway, and another one feeding the aprons and gates.

Creating plain taxiway is easy - you just plop the straight or 90-degree curve taxiway pieces. We don't have the 'flicks' either, so arrow orientation isn't that important. However, intersections, diagonals and 45-degree curves are more complicated. Let's start with a simple 4-way orthogonal junction, which is made with two Half-T pieces:


Obviously you need to ensure these pieces are placed the right way round, and the rule for taxiways is that the arrow should always point to the centreline of the relevant taxiway. So in this case, the arrow points towards the centreline of the horizontal taxiway.

I'm now going to show a few pictures explaining how to build various kinds of intersections, as well as diagonals and 45-degree curves. What is being built should be obvious from the pictures:






(The highlighted pieces above are two instances of the Quarter X piece.)






An important consideration is the spacing between strips of tarmac, be they taxiways or runways. I like to keep at least 8 tiles between parallel tarmacs, giving planes more than enough room to taxi safely and also providing a distance that looks very good from higher zoom levels:


Put these all together and you have a taxiway.
The second taxiway connects to aprons and gates, so we need to mark out where we want these aprons and gates to go before we do anything else. As with the runway, we do this with road. Our plan calls for 3 apron areas, so we need to construct 3 sections of road:


We can now build the taxiway, using the pieces with the apron on one side where the marker road runs parallel to the route of the taxiway. Intersections are built as per regular taxiways, but using taxiway/apron pieces on the apron side instead of regular taxiway pieces:


Continuing this down the taxiway, we get a completed taxiway system:


Our attention now turns to the leftmost apron, which will serve small planes and business jets. Let's start with some hangars:


Later on during construction I decided to get rid of that top hangar. Buildings that close to taxiways are not a good idea.

Now we're going to build a parking area for small planes like Cessnas. This requires us to use the Cessna tiedown pieces found in the RMIP set. Be sure to get the patterns consistent, use the end pieces at the end, and remember to leave 4-5 tiles of free space between the parking area and any other features of this apron so the planes have room to get out:


Next up is the business jet gates. Remember to leave space for aircraft manoeuvres and for a pedestrian walkway we'll build shortly:


At the end of this section of apron, we're going to put in a couple of gates for passenger turboprop planes:


Of course, these gates need to be connected to the taxiway! This is where the TMIP pieces come into their own. They're self-explanatory to use when you come to it - however, it's important to use the right base texture. There are different textures for aprons (used for the Cessna parking area), ramps (used for the business jet and turboprop gates), and dark ramps (used for some passenger jets).
Having established which texture to use, it's just a matter of using the pieces needed to connect each gate to the taxiway. You will also need to replace some of the taxiway/apron pieces with the taxiway/ramp straight pieces found in the TMIP set:


Now, in between the business jets and the Cessnas, as well as in between the Cessnas and the hangars, we can build a full-width taxiway, using the taxiway/apron and taxiway/ramp half pieces as appropriate. Intersections with the main taxiway can be built using the relevant Quarter X pieces - there is one for ramps and one for aprons:


These taxiways are dead ends, so to close them off we use the Taxiway End piece from the RMIP set, as well as the appropriate TMIP pieces:


Now you can use the apron filler pieces and ramp filler pieces to fill in the gaps:


The next thing to do is to break out the ACB-VLT terminals and build a couple of the Small Concourse with Connection to RMIP-2 lots, connecting the airfield walkways to the passenger terminal to allow passengers access to the turboprop and business jet gates:


The walkways are next, for which we use both the RMIP offerings and the SCAG Turboprop Walkways (downloading this file and the dependency will ensure you have them):


Our small plane area is now finished, so it's time to move on to the passenger jets.
The two obvious considerations here are which airlines you're going to use and the planes you're going to use, which will vary depending on the purpose of the airport. In Mapleford's case, it's a mid-sized major airport, so we'll have several gates serving small passenger jets like 737s, 757s and MD-80s, and a handful of gates serving big planes like A330s and 777s.
With regards to airlines, any important airport, which Mapleford would certainly be considered as, is normally a hub for one or more carriers. So it makes sense to determine which airlines you want your airport to be a hub for, and dedicate a few gates to them. Which airline(s) you choose is a matter of personal preference; I've gone for two big British airlines, the flag-carrier British Airways and the budget airline Easyjet:




As with the small plane gates, you need to leave about 5 tiles of space between opposite gates to leave room for aircraft to manoeuvre. Some space should also be left for the passenger terminal concourses, which we will build later.
You may also note that we've left some gates empty. It's a good idea to do this when you can, as it will give a more realistic appearance - there won't be planes at the gates all of the time, since it takes time for another aircraft to arrive at the gate once another plane has left.

Continuing on, it's now time to build some more gates for small passenger jets. Since we've built dedicated areas for our hub airlines, these gates can be used by any airline you like, and so the Random Airline gate lot, featured on some plane sets available on the exchanges, is useful here.
It's a good idea to dedicate areas for particular planes - as you will see below, we have one area for 737s and another area for MD-80s:


Then we move on to the large planes. This is another place to dedicate certain gates to certain planes and airlines, and here I've dedicated a couple of gates to the long-haul carrier Virgin Atlantic and their A330s, as well as a couple to British Airways 777s. You will also need to leave more room for the planes to get in and out - at least 8 tiles of clear space should do it:


As with the small plane gates, we now need to connect these gates to the taxiway with the appropriate TMIP pieces and filler pieces:


Two out of three aprons done. The third is the cargo terminal, and doing this bit is simply a matter of placing some cargo plane gates (available on the exchanges) perpendicular to the taxiway and a few tiles away from it:


And, for the last time, connect each gate to the taxiway:


That's the tarmac done, so now it's time to do the airport buildings. First up is the fire station, which should be placed next to an apron to give the fire engines easy access to the tarmac:


Equally as important, if not more important, is the airport's control tower, which needs to be carefully positioned and orientated so that the entire airport is visible from the tower. A small car park for the tower controllers is also useful:


This next building is optional, but is often seen at important airports. It's a VOR-DME station, which is essentially a radio transmitter that puts out directional radio signals that pilots use to navigate. Place it out in the airfield, away from tarmacked areas to avoid collisions:


Having built the ancillary buildings, we move on to do the actual terminals. The cargo terminal is easiest, so we'll start with that. The first job is to place some container lots next to the gates for use as a storage area for cargo about to be loaded onto the planes:


The terminal building is next, and for a cargo terminal the building doesn't need to be fancy. For a small cargo terminal like this one, a simple rectanglular structure will suffice.
The lots you see below are part of the ACB-VLT Terminals and Jets Set 1, a link to which you should have already seen and followed. Start with the outside edge, which, as you might expect, will require the use of the corner pieces and the edge pieces. You will also need to place at least 2 entrance lots at the front of the terminal:


To fill in the middle bit, you can use either the plain fillers or the arched fillers present in the terminal set. I've gone for the arched fillers, which give the terminal a nice look:


And there's your cargo terminal building. Easy, right? Well enjoy it while you can because the passenger terminal is a little more complicated.
It all starts with the entrance. The ACB-VLT set provides some 2x3 lots that make very good entrances. However, 2x3 is a little small for an airport passenger terminal entrance, so you'll need to build several of them. You also need to use the appropriate end pieces to close off the entrances so that they fit neatly with the concourses we will build in a moment. The following picture explains all:


To finish off the entrances, it's necessary to place a Style 3 Concourse Corner Piece at each end of the terminal entrance, as this will give a neat transition to the rest of the terminal:


At the back, placing the Style 3 Edge pieces with the edge facing the entrances helps to give a smooth entrance-concourse transition at this end:


Notice how I've alternated between 2 lots, one having a plain roof and the other having the blue roof window, with two roof window lots next to each other opposite the link to the gates. This is an important thing to do if you want a good-looking terminal. Using only the plain lots will make the terminal look boring. Using only the roof window lots will make the blue on the roof overpowering and not visually pleasing. Using them randomly will create a haphazard look which isn't good either. Hence it's best to alternate like you see above.
Opposite the gate connections, the rule is that both the relevant tiles have the same roof texture, like you see above.

Speaking of gate connections, let's do those now. These require the use of the Style 3 Edge and Corner pieces, which you've used already. Remember to alternate the roof textures:


Once you've done all of the gate connections, the main bulk of the terminal can be filled in using the Style 3 Concourse Filler Pieces. With regards to roof textures, the blue window roof lots are placed every second tile in every second row for the best possible aesthetic effect, except opposite gate connections where plain roof textures will probably need to be used to avoid blue roofs being too close to each other. Any empty areas can be spiced up by using the Type C filler piece, which features ventilation equipment:


Hold on - there's a diagonal section at the bottom there, which I've put in to save space. Let's find out how that was built before we do anything else.
In actual fact it's very easy to build diagonal passenger terminals. It requires the use of the two diagonal concourse pieces found in the ACB-VLT set, as shown below:


Be careful not to get blue window roof pieces too close to each other.

The turboprop gate area requires a little ruse to make it look nice - the use of diagonal pieces directly next to the RMIP walkway connectors we built earlier, with the rest built as already described:


Filling in the gaps gives us a highly authentic passenger terminal:


Wow. Now you might think we need to build something similar for our Cessna parking area. We don't. All we need is a street connection and a security gate to protect the airfield from trespassers:


Note that I've given the fire station its own access gate. The firefighters have to get there somehow!

With the terminals complete, it's time to finish off the airfield with some small details. First on the list is taxiway signs:


There are signs for taxiways to the left, taxiways to the right and crossing taxiways, in both orthogonal and diagonal form, included in the RMIP set. You need to place the appropriate sign wherever pilots can change taxiways and a sign isn't there already. That means you'll have to sign up all of your taxiway junctions. Yes, all of them. It's a tedious task but it has to be done.

A perimeter fence can now be built around the airfield. The RMIP set has fence lots designed to work with everything else, so it makes sense to use those.
Once the fence is completed, any and all gaps in between tarmac areas should be filled using the RMIP Grass Filler lots (be aware that these lots, as well as the fences, are found in the Parks menu and not the Airports menu):


With all the grassing done, the airfield is now complete. Lets have a look at what we've done so far:


(And before anyone says anything, I noticed when writing this that the control tower has mysteriously vanished. This will be fixed for the next lesson.)

With the airfield and airport buildings completed, we now need to think about how people are going to get to the airport.
Road access is the first thing on the agenda, and the passenger terminal entrance naturally needs road access. This includes an area for taxis, an area for buses and a substantial amount of car parking.
Precisely how you do this will vary from airport to airport, but here I've made a one-way loop which splits into two routes at the terminal entrance - one for taxis and one for buses. The loop has been connected to the main road system through a couple of avenue roundabouts. Note that spurs to the car park we will build inside the loop have also been included:


The direction of the loop will depend on what side of the road your cars drive on. It's clockwise for LHD and anti-clockwise for RHD. If it helps, think of it as a big roundabout, think about what way cars go around them in your country, and determine the correct direction to drag in from there.

The bus stops are then added to the bus lane, together with a modern-looking elevated rail station to provide a connection to Mapleford's public transport system. You will need to build several bus stops, and for maximum effectiveness, you should use the same lot for all of them:


Make sure your bus shelters are on the correct side. I live in England, so for me the bus shelters go on the left of the road. If you're in the US, continental Europe or anywhere else that drives on the right, the shelters should be on the right.

The loop can now be filled with a car park. My favoured set (HH Modular Parking, which comes in several downloads and is available on the STEX), has a piece with one-way arrows, so I can incorporate a nice complicated one-way system into my car park. If your favoured car park set has a similar piece, you may want to do the same, as many car parks feature complicated one way systems (which are regularly ignored!):


Our plan also calls for a regular railway station, so let's put that in now. I've had to make use of the NAM Viaduct Rail pieces, as well as a viaduct rail station that I believe is included in the latest NAM:


Is that it? Of course not. When I said 'substantial car parking', I meant a five-figure parking space count, or at least a parking system which looks like it has at least 10,000 spaces.
That might seem like a hell of a lot of parking spaces to you, but think about it. This airport will serve millions of passengers a year. Many of them are going to come from within driving distance of the airport, and you can't take your car on a plane! So they've got to have somewhere to put their cars, hence why we need so much parking.
So, to get enough parking spaces for the airport, we're going to need more car parks. Specifically, we're going to need a couple of very big multi-storey car parks.
To do this, I'm using the 8-Level Modular Parking set, which, if you've been following this MD since the beginning, you'll be familiar with as we used it a few times in Project 2. Using it, or your preferred parking set, you need to create a very large car park:


Yeah. I wasn't lying when I said 'very large car park'. Note that the car park, out of necessity more than anything else, has two entrances and two sets of lifts.

This car park certainly looks good, but anyone who parks near the western edge of the car park has a long way to walk to get to the terminal. To cater for these people, we're going to put in a shuttle bus service from the western edge of the car park right to the bus stops outside the entrance of the terminal. This requires the construction of a turning loop next to the car park for us to put the end-of-the-line bus stop on, made with one-way road:


As before, make sure your bus shelter is on the correct side of the road. Here, the buses will turn in from the right entrance and leave at the left exit, and I drive on the left, hence the shelter is on the outside of the turning loop.

To add a few extra spaces and fill in an awkward corner, we're now going to put in a surface car park in between the main road and the eastern entrance to the big car park we just built. A bus stop for the shuttle bus has also been included:


The western car park is now finished. On the other side of the terminal, we're going to put in another multi-storey car park to get the parking capacity up to the required level, complete with its own shuttle bus service and turning loop:


With regards to the transport lines, you just have to refer to your plan and find a way to adhere to it as closely as possible. Here, as you can see, that has necessitated the used of Viaduct Rail and the High El-Rail puzzle pieces.

You may have noticed we have a set of lifts at the western edge of the above car park, which do not apparently provide a way out of the car park. Seeing how close these lifts are to the terminal, it makes sense to provide a pedestrian path to the road loop. For this, I'm using the Sandstone Ped Mall, mainly because it goes well with the pavement textures I use. Of course, you are welcome to use any suitable plugin you can find, as long as it looks good:


And with that, Mapleford Airport has sufficient car parking. We must now worry about road access for the cargo terminal.
Fortunately, this is much simpler than constructing enormous car parks. All you need to do is to place at least 2 tiles of plain apron (from the RMIP package) in between the cargo terminal and a road serving it. You can then place MMP lorries on the apron, making sure that they face the road:


As with the plane gates, it's a good idea to leave some spaces empty. The same goes for the next thing to be built - a lorry holding area using more plain apron, more MMP lorries, and a couple of fake street connections:


Notice how the lorries are in a neat formation. That's one of those wonderful things that's both realistic and aesthetically pleasing, so make sure you do it.

On the other side, our hangars need some road access, so let's do that now:


Our airport is nearly complete - there's just a couple of small details we need to add to finish it off.

The first is some fillers for our roundabouts. Note that in the picture below, I've put a stylish filler on the main entrance roundabout, and a much more functionalist filler on the roundabout above it, as it is on airport property. This functionalist approach to airport architecture is common, and is something to bear in mind when designing them:


This next roundabout is outside of airport property - it serves the eastern car park and the cargo terminal road. Hence we can go for a nicer roundabout filler:


There's also a lot of empty space on airport property. Are we just going to leave it as plain terrain?
Of course not. We're going to spruce up the airport by filling the plain terrain within it with overhanging grass fillers. We use these because a) it allows us to put grass under the rail viaducts and elevated rail line, and b) it halves our workload because it covers 2 tiles at a time rather than 1:


That's nice, isn't it? There's just one last thing to do, and that's to put some planes on the tarmac.

There are a good few MMP planes on the exchanges, so grab as many as you can find. However, it's not a case of 'I'll just put a plane here... and here...' - you have to put some careful thought into positioning your planes. Here's some pointers to follow:

- Aircraft should be on the centreline of any taxiway or runway that they might be on.
- Under no circumstances should there be more than one plane on any particular runway at any one time. It's a rule that exists in real-life aviation for obvious reasons.
- Don't put too many planes on the tarmac. The number will of course vary depending on the size of your airport and the traffic it gets, but for an airport like Mapleford's, I'd set an upper limit of about 10 planes.
- At a particular time, aircraft will be using the runway in one particular direction (e.g. for Mapleford they will either be using Runway 09 (landing and taking off to the east) or Runway 27 (to the west)). Therefore you need to determine your active runway and orient the planes accordingly. In the picture below, I've chosen Runway 09 as the active runway, so the planes are going towards the runway on the west side of the airport, and away from the runway on the east side.
- Placing a small queue of planes on approach to the runway to represent planes waiting to take off is always a good idea.

Here's a picture of a couple of planes on the tarmac at the western edge of Mapleford Airport as an example:


Once all the planes have been properly positioned, it's time to take a step back and relax, because we are done. Let's have a look at the finished Mapleford Airport (less the control tower, which, as I said before, I know about and will fix):


I'm quite proud of that picture. We've successfully constructed a mid-sized airport for Mapleford that looks great and will serve the city well.
One of the great things about airports is that they also look fabulous at night as well:




To finish off, let's take a look at the airport from the region view. It's on the right - you can't really miss it:


You can really appreciate how big the airport is from here. We're done.

Now, I'm off on holiday for the next week, so you won't be hearing from me until September 1st at the earliest. When I come back, the next lesson will focus on the airport city tile's transport infrastructure - things like roads, railways, metro lines, etc.

See you then,
Chris