What's new in AC3D 9.0?

Exclusive X-Plane Aircraft

Included with AC3D 9.0 is this great F3A RC Plane for use with X-Plane which was designed and built with AC3D. This has been tested in X-Plane 11 (and is being tested with 12).

All files are included (plane, texture, sounds etc) so you can fly your own radio-controlled aircraft inside X-Plane.

The AC3D files are also included so you can modify it as desired.

After installation of AC3D, the files for this aircraft can be found in the models/XPlane folder, within the AC3D folder.

Thanks to VSKYLABS for this model and video. Check out their website for more. (Model to be used for non-commercial purpose only)

Note: X-Plane users should download and install the lastest X-Plane plugin for AC3D 9.0

2D Booleans

Subtract, intersect, union, knife and embed 2D shapes.
Combine and embed 2D shapes to create non-overlapping continuous geometry

Quadrangulate

Automatically combine adjacent triangles and turn them into quads.


Great for cleaning-up/simplifying models and fixing files from software that only handles triangles.

Thicken lines

Quickly generate shapes such as road layouts by making and thickening lines.

Enhanced Hierarchy window

Easily inspect object details by simply dragging the mouse over an item.

The information window on the right automatically updates with details about that object, including texture (if applied) and the data string (used in many applications such as X-Plane)

The divider between the groups and info can be moved horizontally.

Cut/Copy/Paste object data strings between objects

Blocky textures option

When using AC3D's built-in Texture Coordinate Editor for texture-mapping in very high detail, i.e. zoomed-in on the texture pixels, you may want to see those pixels, rather than the smoothed version of the texture.

This option, found in

File->settings->advanced->Blocky-textures, allows the full pixel details of a texture to be seen (requires restart of AC3D).

Blocky-textures switched OFF (the default)

Blocky-textures ON

Straighten vertices

This is handy to align vertices. Select the first vertex, shift-select any number of intermediate vertices and shift-select a final vertex. After menu Vertex->Straighten, the intermediate vertices are aligned along the line determined from the first and last selected vertice.

Speed Improvements

Many functions have been rewritten to be faster and more efficient. Loading speed of many different formats has been improved.

And much more! See below for a full list.

See the readme/installer info for a full list including fixes and changes.

Download AC3D 9.0 now

Full list of additions:

added - 2D Boolean functions (Subtract, Intersect, Union, Knife, Embed, Combine-Surfaces) (Object menu)
added - Edit->Select-Vertices->With-two-edges
added - Edit->Select-Vertices->With-two-edges-straight
added - Surface->quadrangulate and two related settings in File->Settings->General
added - Surface->Thicken line (control + l)
added - speed optimization of many file format importers
added - holding control key down when rotating with the mouse moves in steps of pref mouse_rotate_ctrl_steps
added - Vertex->Straighten
added - Edit->Select-Vertices->Isolated
added - Tools->Sort-Object-Vertices
added - shiny textures - textures are now modulated by the specular material value (option to switch off in Graphics settings)
added - advanced setting for blocky textures (switches off texture smoothing)
added - shortcut key "a" for View->Look-At-Selection
added - Object->Reduce retains surface materials
added - info inspector pane to Hierarchy Tool window
added - copy/paste/cut object-data items added to hierarchy popup menu (move items now in sub menu)
added - recoded, much faster, Object->Optimize-Vertices
added - the following functions were undoable but cleared the previous undo queue. They have been rewritten to be fully undoable.
Object->Explode
Object->Fragment
Surface->Cut-Away-Object
Vertex->Unweld
Object->Merge
Object->Reduce
added - .oft font files to list of supported file types for 2D/3D font text
added - subdivided surfaces are hidden if surfaces are hidden (surface-hide/unhide script hack)
added - Surface->cut-away now optimizes the vertices of the new object
added - tcl commands object_get_num_surfaces, object_get_num_vertices, object_get_textureid, object_get_texture_name
added - zooming in/out limits in 2D windows
added - size displayed after pressing toolbar buttons for size%
added - much faster Object->Optimize-vertices
added - set_show_popups internal ac3d command e.g. "ac3d set_show_popups 0" disables message popups. For script users.
added - MAC - UI will run in high-res on HiDPI display (OpenGL View remain the same)
added - add_undoable_tcl command. Creates an undoable using tcl execute and undo strings