The wheel fairings parts can be used both to model landing gear doors (even in asymmetric fashion) and also to build extra body parts for the aircraft model. Here it is presented both techniques.

Case One - building extra parts for your aircraft model:

Once again I used that beautiful FA-18 model from Greg Hoffer, now sporting the naval based painting. Pay attention to the following image and you will notice that the plane just been catapulted from the carrier deck is transporting three external fuel tanks. Two of them were built using the tank/float part and the third one (central mounted) was built using one wheel fairing part.

Assuming that most traditional aircraft use three pieces to assembly their landing gear set, we will get two spare pieces for building extra parts. This is so because it is need to displace a landing gear strut where the desired piece will be on the aircraft frame.

How-to steps:

1. Model the extra pieces using the wheel fairing editing pane of Plane-Maker. When intending to build more than one extra piece and only if they will be different shaped it will be necessary to model each one in a different ACF file;
   
   
2. Use the ACF2TXT utility to convert the ACF file(s) to TXT format;
   
   
3. Search the TXT files for the set of arrays named "body_XYZ"*. These arrays are tridimensional where the first element relates to the plane's part, the second element relates to each part section and the third element relates to each section node. The values that go along with them are the respectively "X", "Y" and "Z" coordinates for that node;
   
   (*) For the wheel fairing parts, the target arrays would be the ones named from "body_XYZ[25]" to "body_XYZ[29]";
   
   
4. Clean the sets that you do not want to sport a wheel fairing. To clean mean that you have to put zero for their all values (X,Y,Z). For this FA-18 example it was add a forth micro strut just between the engines nacelles, where the fuel tank was desired. Editing the TXT file was to clean (zeroing) all the values for array sets from "body_XYZ[25]" to "body_XYZ[27]" and also "body_XYZ[29]" leaving untouched only the array set "body_XYZ[28]".
   
   Note: If you want different shaped parts, you will have to transfer their array values from that other ACF (converted to TXT) file where it was modeled, because Plane-Maker permits just one shape for all wheel fairings.
   
   
5. Use the ACF2TXT utility to convert the merged TXT file back to ACF format;

Depending on which wheel fairing you leave with data different from zero, when you open that aircraft in Plane-Maker you may see either no wheel fairing rendered or many equal shaped in each landing gear strut. But when the aircraft is opened direct in X-Plane it will be rendered correctly.

Caution: Once the plane is modified and converted back to ACF format it cannot be saved through Plane-Maker because doing so will reset all wheel fairing parts to match what Plane-Maker is showing.

Case Two - building functional landing gear doors:

Using this same technique it is possible to model one different landing gear door for each strut and they will work deploying and retracting in conjunction with the landing gears:

You just need to model each one in separate as cited in the above how-to steps (using different ACF files to start), then convert them all to TXT format, copying their corresponding array values to the desired arrays in the airplane TXT file and finally converting this latter merged file back to ACF format.

See the technique applied in my CBA-123 Vector:

Almost everything here done by me: Marcelo M. Marques - codename 31 M.M.M
mmarques@frontier.com.br