Airport Design Editor (ADE9X) is a graphical scenery design tool. It allows you to enhance existing FSX airports as well as create new ones. Based on the design principles of Lee Swordy's AFCAD2, it has far exceeded the capabilities of the FS9 tool by supporting the new FSX features. The coding for ADE9X is done by Jon Masterson, with a dedicated team supporting him in the development of the software.
Let me quote Jon to describe the goal of ADE9X:
"ADE sets out to achieve two things in designing and enhancing airports. First to make the enhanced airport look good, and second to make it work properly. Airport design must address both aspects - the visible and the invisible. The design philosophy goes further in assisting users of all levels to get things right from the start. Error checking and 'common sense' are built in. At the same time it is important to allow users flexibility. ADE is being developed with the help of a small group of dedicated airport designers with a wealth of knowledge and experience."
If you do scenery design, give ADE a try. Click on the image below to visit Jon Masterson's homepage.
Production Release V.1.78
The current production version of ADE is version 1.78 released on Dec 24, 2019Development Release V.1.79
There is usually a development version of ADE. This is where new and enhanced features are tested and bugs fixed. The current development version is 1.79 and it supports the newly released P3D v5.Older unsupported Releases
You can also find the unsupported versions V.165, V.1.70 and V.176 for download here.Tutorials
Bob Kesshan has put a tremendous amount of work into creating three tutorials for ADE so far. He has gone to great lengths to present the basics of airport design in a very understandable way. These tutorials can be selected as a download option when running the installer.Tutorial1 - Paths, Parking and Aprons
Tutorial2 - Background Images
Helmuth Hauck has produced an excellent German manual that will be part of the installation package for the new 1.40 release. All updates for the English manual of the 1.45 release are also done by him.