[wizzardworks]

Bumbelbeeman, There is an entry in the planemaker/standard/landing gear for strut travel on the planemaker landing gear. If you are entering an object which is animated in Blender or AC3D you assign the rotations (things with a circular path) or translations (straight line movement) to an X-ref for that major part fom the list of references in the plug in. All the scissor action, strut compression type things are off a base point of the assigned reference. In the heirarchy list each part of the linkage has a rotation to which the degrees of travel from start to finish are entered. These are relative to the item above them. Think of it like diagraming a sentence in grade school. Locate the retract point of rotation at the top of the list. then the strut translation as it's dependent. That way the strut will have travel and also rotate with the upper sleeve when the gear retracts. The upper scissor link is a rotation around an axis on the lower strut. The lower scissor link is a rotation about the movable end of the upper scissor link. The wheel and brake disk are a rotation about a point on the end of the strut yoke. Things which are made of many objects like the strut, yoke, bearings, and seals are selected as a group in the heirarchy with the group name. Then when you animate a group all the bits assigned to it move with the single x-ref. Same thing with the pins in the scissor link. They would be grouped with the link they have no relative rotation to. The first part at the top of an animation heirarchy needs the x-ref related to a control movement in X-plane like "retract landing gear" the rest are just selected from the list by whether they turn continuously (wheel) or have a start and end of travel angle (scissor link). In the case of the strut compression you would pick that X-ref because it is programmed into the sim and would get the dynamic movement derived from forces in the sim. A group such as the wheel rim tire and brake disk would be a maingear or nose gear x-ref so that the rotational speed matches ground speed.
The idea that everything in the heirarchy is subject to all that is above it, and in control of everything below it is the key. Choose the x-ref corresponding to the data generated in the sim for that group to have it animate.
When you export from AC3D your assembled landing gear as an .OBJ8 file that goes within a folder of "objects" which in tern is in the file for your aircraft just like your "airfoils" folder. You then go to planemaker and open the .acf file for the plane, go to standard/misc objects/ name the object, click the box on the left of the name and direct planemaker to the object so it will open with the aircraft.
wizzardworks