Building planes with Create Aeronautics

Create Aeronautics lets you build a real flying machine out of Create blocks. It is great fun and a bit of a puzzle. This page is everything we learned getting shared planes from createmod.com flying on Indigo. If you just want to fly, Immersive Aircraft is the craft-and-go option.

Check the required mods first

Shared schematics are .nbt files, and every page on createmod.com lists Required Mods near the bottom. Check that list before you download: a block from a mod Indigo does not have simply comes out as air, and items from it vanish from chests. Since 0.5.2-birch-13 Indigo has the Create addons that shared vehicles use most.

On Indigo:

Mod (as createmod.com lists it)	On Indigo since
Create, Create Aeronautics, Create Aeronautics (Simulated), Create Aeronautics (Offroad)	birch-4
Create: Copycats+	birch-12
Create: Connected (createmod.com may call it “Create Fly: Connected”)	birch-13
Create Deco	birch-13
Create: Interiors	birch-13
Create Propulsion: Simulated (“Create: Propulsion”)	birch-13
Create: Diesel Generators (“Create Fly: Diesel Generators”)	birch-13
Create: Steam ‘n’ Rails (“Create Fly: Steam ‘n’ Rails”)	birch-13
Create: Design n’ Decor	birch-13
Create Crafts & Additions	birch-13
Create Encased	birch-13
Create: Aeroworks	birch-13
Create: Deep Seas (boat floaters, submarine propellers, sails)	birch-15
Farmer’s Delight, Supplementaries, Chipped, CC: Tweaked	already in the pack

Not on Indigo, and what happens:

Create Big Cannons (and Create: Radars, which needs it): no guns. Planes that use it usually still fly.
Create: Bits ‘n’ Bobs, Create: Dreams & Desires, Create: The Factory Must Grow, Create: Blaze Burner Fuels and anything else not in the table: those blocks and items are missing. Small details are fine; if the list is long, pick another schematic.
Valkyrien Skies or Clockwork: a different physics mod. Those vehicles will not work here at all.

Do not rotate or mirror the preview unless the page says you can. Many vehicles are wired for one direction, and a turned copy steers or throttles backwards.

Check and fix a schematic before pasting

Staff have a small tool, scripts/schematic-doctor.py in the server repo, that reads a .nbt before anyone pastes it. Send the file to staff in Discord and you get back a plain answer:

Missing mods: which blocks and items would come out as air or vanish, and from which mod.
Spinning parts: propellers that were saved while turning. Those are stored as a moving part, not as blocks, and Indigo cannot load them, so they disappear on paste.
Glue and controls: whether the file carries its own glue, a Physics Assembler, a typewriter, swivel bearings and engines.

For spinning parts there is a fix: the tool puts the propeller’s blocks back in front of their bearing, exactly where they sit when the prop stops, and marks the bearing as stopped so it picks the blades up again when the engine turns it. You get a .fixed.nbt to paste instead, and you can skip step 2 below.

For staff:

python scripts/schematic-doctor.py namespaces --rack <ssh host>
python scripts/schematic-doctor.py check plane.nbt
python scripts/schematic-doctor.py fix plane.nbt plane.fixed.nbt

namespaces reads the live server’s mod list over SSH (read only) and caches it, so check knows what Indigo has.

1. Get the schematic into the world

In Prism, right-click your Indigo instance and pick Folder, Minecraft. Put the .nbt in the schematics folder there (make it if it is missing).
In game, craft a Schematic Table and an Empty Schematic. Put the empty one in the table, pick your file and upload it. You get a filled schematic.
Right-click with the schematic in your hand first. This is the step everyone misses: until you do, the tool menu does nothing.
Right-click the ground to drop the ghost preview where you want the plane.
Hold Left Alt and scroll to switch tools (Position, Move, Rotate, Mirror, Print). Ctrl + scroll works the tool you have. If Alt does nothing, check Options, Controls, Key Binds, Create, Focus Schematic Overlay: another mod may share the key.
Creative: choose Print and right-click, and the plane appears at once. Survival: load the schematic into a Schematicannon with the materials and gunpowder and it builds the plane block by block. A Schematicannon sometimes misses chain drive links, so if a control does nothing afterwards, look for a broken chain connection and link it by hand.

Litematica (Forgematica) can paste too, but Create’s own Print is the better choice for planes.

2. Check the propellers

A lot of plane schematics were saved with the propeller spinning. A spinning prop is not stored as blocks, so neither Print nor Litematica brings it across: you get a bare Propeller Bearing on the nose or wings.

Easiest fix: have staff run the file through the schematic check first. If you already pasted it:

Break the Propeller Bearing and place it again, facing the same way. The pasted one may think it is still spinning with nothing attached.
Rebuild the blades on its face. Each schematic is different, but a typical small prop is a short hub of logs sticking straight out with sails in a + shape around it, two sails per arm. If you are not sure, ask in Discord and someone can read the layout out of the file for you.
When the engine starts turning the bearing, it picks the blades up. If not, right-click the bearing.

3. Glue it, then assemble it

A pasted plane is still just blocks. It only becomes a vehicle when you assemble it with a Physics Assembler, and the assembler only takes blocks that are glued together with it.

Find the Physics Assembler. It is a small lever-like block, often on top of a wing or in the cockpit. If the schematic has none, place one on the plane somewhere easy to reach (it becomes part of the plane).
Glue the whole plane with Super Glue: right-click one corner, right-click the opposite corner (nose to tail, wingtip to wingtip), then right-click a third time to confirm. The outline alone is only a preview.
- Start the box at the wheels, not below them. Any grass or dirt inside the box gets glued onto the plane, and then it bounces, jitters or sinks into the ground.
- Glue saved inside a schematic may not come across with the paste, so glue it yourself anyway.
Assemble: hold right-click on the Physics Assembler and drag the mouse, like pulling a lever, until it clunks. If only one part moves (say, just the top wing), that part was not glued to the rest: pull the assembler again to put it back as blocks, glue everything, and try again.
Any Physics Assembler on the plane can turn it back into blocks later. It has to be sitting level on the ground to do that.

4. Fuel, throttle and taking off

Fuel: most planes run on Portable Engines. Right-click one with coal or charcoal (any furnace fuel), or feed it with a hopper or funnel. Engineer’s Goggles show how much fuel is left. Printed planes may already be fuelled; Schematicannon builds start empty.
Controls are wired up by the plane’s builder, usually through a Linked Typewriter or a Lectern Controller in the cockpit. Sit down, use the controller, and check the clipboard or signs the builder left.
Sails are wings. Regular Create sails make lift only when the plane is moving fast, so a spinning prop on the spot will not lift you. Give it a long, flat runway, open the throttle, build up speed, then pull up. Symmetric sails only add drag; they are the tail fins and flaps.
Throttle goes backwards? The prop is spinning the wrong way, which happens when a schematic is mirrored or rotated. Find the Rotation Speed Controller that feeds the props and flip the sign of its speed (for example from 256 to -256). You can do this while the plane is assembled.

Boats

Most shared boats use Create: Deep Seas floaters and propellers, in the pack since 0.5.2-birch-15. The Boats page has the tested way to paste one in and float it in one command.

Create Aeronautics vehicles float. A hull that keeps the water out sits on the surface, so a boat is a vehicle built on water with a way to push itself along. Shared boats like the wooden motorboat need nothing beyond Create and Aeronautics.

Build or paste it on the water, or build it on the shore and assemble it there, then push it in.
A sealed hull floats. Water stays out of the inside of an assembled vehicle, so the hull itself gives the lift. Heavy blocks low down make it steadier; a tall, top-heavy boat rolls.
Push it with a propeller on a Propeller Bearing (in the water or in the air behind it), turned by Portable Engines like a plane. The Red Salmon fishing boat uses thirteen of them. Steer with a rudder made of Symmetric Sails on a bearing, or by running the propellers at different speeds.
Fuel works like planes: Portable Engines burn coal or charcoal.
Glue and assemble it like a plane (above). Start the glue box at the waterline blocks of the hull, and do not include the water or the sea floor.

Not tested yet on Indigo: building a boat from scratch. The steps above come from the mods’ own code (vehicles keep water out of their hulls) and from shared boat schematics.

OP rescue commands

When a plane is stuck, bouncing or lost, an OP can use these. The selectors are single letters, like vanilla’s @p:

Selector	Picks
`@v`	the one you are looking at
`@n`	the nearest one
`@l`	the latest one made
`@i`	the one you are standing on or in
`@t`	the one you are riding
`@e`	all of them
`@r`	a random one

/sable teleport @v ~ ~5 ~ moves the plane you are looking at to 5 blocks above you. Stand somewhere open first.
/sable info @e lists every physics vehicle with its position.
/sable remove @v deletes the plane you are looking at, blocks and all. Use it when a plane is glitched beyond saving, then paste a fresh one.

Press Tab after /sable to see what else is there.

Good to know

Keep test flights away from town and other people’s builds.
A crash can scatter blocks. Build where you can pick them up.
Stuck on a plane? Ask in Discord with a screenshot and the schematic’s link.