Creating links manually

Soft links (shortcuts)

Shortcuts can easily be created with the Windows Explorer. Just remember that they can only be used for scenery packages in the Custom Scenery folder.
To create a shortcut: go to the location where the actual scenery package is located (source), right click on it and select copy:

Now go the Custom Scenery folder of X-Plane,right click again and select ‘Paste as shortcut’

You will see the shortcut down below:

If you want you can remove the ‘ – Shortcut’ part in the name.

X-plane will ‘translate’ the shortcut for you. In the scenery_packs.ini file you will see this line:

Hardlinks (junctions and symbolic links)

To create junctions and symbolic links you will have to start the command prompt (for symbolic links you will need to select ‘Run as administrator’):

If you type ‘MKLINK’ you will see how to use the command:

To create a symbolic link (1st example) or junction (2nd example) you type:

MKLINK /D "D:\X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery\BIKF Keflavik" "E:\Airports Europe\BIKF Keflavik"
MKLINK /J "D:\X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery\BS2001 Object Library" "E:\Airports Europe\BS2001 Object Library"

And the result in the Custom Scenery folder (symbolic links have a green arrow and junctions have a gray chain in their icon):

For X-Plane these links are normal folders. Windows handles everything in the background and X-Plane does not need to know that they are actually links.

Deleting

Shortcuts, symbolic links and junctions can be deleted without problem: the original folder will not be deleted.