In article .com,
says...


If someone were to being a (very long term) project to design a small
aicraft, on a budget, what software tool would be appropriate?

Is AutoCAD good enough or is there something more appropriate?

TIA,


AutoCad jocks like to say you can design ANYTHING with AutoCad, and you
probably can - but it is ceratinly not the best suited tool for aircraft
design. 3D design is not parametric in AutoCad, meaning that any
modification - even moving a screw hole to a different position -
requires a re-draw. That gets old really fast.

The industry standard is of course Dassault's CATIA - but Scaled
Composites use Vellum (among others) and anything parametric with NURBS
modeling (Solidworks, Mechanical Desktop, Inventor, Pro-Engineer) will
work much better than plain AutoCad. These programs also interface more
easily through IGES to machine programs, to help you with prototyping and
manufacturing the thousands of individual parts you will need to draw in
your quest.

Best of luck . . .