To edit an SDL file, you must first convert it to ASCII format (text), using the Alias Binary SDL command-line utility, and then use your favorite text editor to make your changes.
After you complete any edits to the file, run bsdl on the file again to convert it back to binary format before rendering.
Usually, you will not need to directly edit SDL files. Instead, the interactive modeling program will automatically generate the SDL file for a scene and output it to the renderer.
There are, however, some cases where you may want to edit an SDL file:
By applying basic programming constructs to scene descriptions you can create useful and spectacular effects that would be tedious or impossible to create with the interactive modeler alone. You can also augment the dynamics and particle systems of the interactive modeler with the flexibility of the SDL programming language.
Once you have an SDL file describing a scene, you can then render it either within the interactive modeler, or using one of the stand-alone renderers.
If you are planning to use the command line to render an SDL file that has embedded textures, you must extract them before writing out the SDL file.
bsdl extract [-f] <text> <binary>
Extract ASCII SDL to -f is specified.
Any text editor can then be used to edit the
bsdl replace <text> <binary>
Insert the ASCII SDL file