CAD Tools For Aircraft Design

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,

-Le Chaud Lapin-

On Sep 25, 5:04 am, john smith wrote:
In article .com,
Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

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?

X-Plane

I've been obsessed with aircraft design for a few years now. Not sure
if I'd ever actually build any of my creations, but its certainly a
fun mental hobby.

Chris Heintz has shared a lot of his basic tricks of the trade he
http://www.zenithair.com/kit-data/college.html

Check out AirplanePDQ... A lot of really useful tools hobbled by a
hellacious interface, but certainly useful.

X-plane is another, but its model tends to be fairly weak for smaller
planes.

Anyone know of an aircraft design enthusiast board?

On Sep 25, 11:25 pm, Airbus wrote:
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.

Arrgggg.....really?

I know virtually nothing about CAD, but IIUC, parametric modeling is
the one feature that a designer *would* want in this situation. Maybe
I misunderstand. Are you saying that in 3D renderings it is not
possible to create interdependencies based on arbitrary parameters?

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.

That helps, knowing what industry standard is, even if I never use it,
gives an idea of what state-of-art is so I know how much suffering to
expect.

I am a bit wary of AutoCAD. I remember back in the 1980's that its
popularity seemed to have more to do with its accessibility on a PC
than its stellar modeling capabilties. I had assumed that, overtime,
AutoDesk would take advantage or their market advantage and find a
more order for their own product, and not patchwork features
incrementally based on customer requests.

I recently tried out the latest version of AutoCAD on a friend's
computer for about 15-20 minutes, and while not getting too deep, it
had the same feel that it had back in 1987. This is not inherently
bad, but I *absolutely detest* comitting to a tool, only to find out
too late that it has serious structural flaws, bugs, artifacts of
modes of thought that have long since become antiquated but have been
kept for sake of backward compatibility....and customer support rep
telling you after you spend hours finding discovering flaws yourself
"it's ok, ever user has to suffer this way...it's a rite of
passage.." ...GRRRRR!...

I suspect that there might be a younger company who recognized
opportunity in doing what AutoDesk might or might not have corrected,
and did it right with something smaller, leaner, cleaner, faster,
perhaps not as full-featured, but not as burdened with the
responsibility of backward compatibility. I just don't know which
product this is. The marketing message put forth by SolidWorks makes
me think it might be it...but I don't have a clue..

...and yes, I would very nice to have something to interface with IGES.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:18:09 -0000, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

I am a bit wary of AutoCAD. I remember back in the 1980's that its
popularity seemed to have more to do with its accessibility on a PC
than its stellar modeling capabilties.

Yes, AutoCAD's huge success was based simply on the fact that it could run
on a PC instead of a mini or a workstation. Because it was the first, it
became an entrenched standard.

It was designed by software programmers and not engineers so the interface
was never very intuitive. It began it's life as a 2-D drafting platform
and evolved into 3-D, so the early drawbacks of the system were just buried
in the core architecture of the software.

I can't comment on current CAD systems as it's been many years since my
involvement, but in the old days AutoCAD was considered quite mediocre
compared to newer systems.


--
Dallas

On Sep 26, 7:52 am, Airbus wrote:
In article ,
says...

I am a bit wary of AutoCAD. I remember back in the 1980's that its
popularity seemed to have more to do with its accessibility on a PC
than its stellar modeling capabilties.

Yes, AutoCAD's huge success was based simply on the fact that it could run
on a PC instead of a mini or a workstation. Because it was the first, it
became an entrenched standard.

This was my suspicion.

It was designed by software programmers and not engineers so the interface
was never very intuitive. It began it's life as a 2-D drafting platform
and evolved into 3-D, so the early drawbacks of the system were just buried
in the core architecture of the software.

I can't comment on current CAD systems as it's been many years since my
involvement, but in the old days AutoCAD was considered quite mediocre
compared to newer systems.

AutoCad has continued to improve over the years, and it would be an error to
say it is poor or weak compared with its competitors. However its competitors
are not the parametric, 3D modelers you need for complex, fluid-form
mechanical models. You need one of the others mentioned for that.

For project management and building trades, AutoCad is very standard - You
can bring twenty contractors into a room and 19 of them will be running
AutoCad and can (and do) exchange files throughout a project.

It's perfectly possible to do 3D modeling and rendering with AutoCad and its
add-ons, and the latest versions have pushed this functionality further - but
it is not intended or well suited for 3D mechanical, beyond simple tasks.

This is why I became suspicious.

The last time I fiddled with AutoCAD was in 1987, 20 years ago, and
even back then I just assumed that complex 3D modeling was standard.
I never actually knew.

It is a bit hard to swallow that what was aguably the leader in CAD
design for PC's at one time has still not "going all the way". On the
other hand, as I said, I'm clueless, so maybe if/when I get into it,
I'll find that I'm worried about nothing. I'd rather someone just
tell me.

I did take a look at X-Plane, per John Smith's suggestion, and at 1st
glance, it seemed to be too high-level for what I'm looking for. I'd
almost rather the tool not know that I'm trying to make a (very) small
airplane, or if it did, that knowledge would be a result of libraries.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

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 . . .

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:06:34 -0700, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

On the
other hand, as I said, I'm clueless, so maybe if/when I get into it,
I'll find that I'm worried about nothing. I'd rather someone just
tell me.

Do shop around.. I recall several less expensive PC CAD systems that were
designed to compete with AutoCAD head to head and were better in many ways.

You might check out:
http://www.cadkey.com/products.html
http://www.cadvance.com/
http://www.turbocad.com/

I'm sure there are others, but these are a few that I remember.


--
Dallas

Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
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?

For 2D stuff: One of the AutoCAD knock-offs based on IntelliCAD is
probably a good way to go. IntelliCAD is a group of people/companies
that develop a CAD "engine" that can read AutoCAD files. Some of the
companies then package that engine with their own GUIs and sell it. I
was using a version called "ProjeCAD" from ProgeSoft; a couple of years
ago they had a freely-available version but now it seems like they just
offer demos of a paid version. http://www.progesoft.com/index.asp

For 3D stuff: SolidWorks. The GUI was designed by someone that had
actually used a modern GUI (Gnome/KDE/OS X/Win9x) for more than a week,
unlike AutoCAD. (To be fair, none of this stuff _existed_ when AutoCAD
started up.) I started out with being kind of able to drive a 2D CAD
program but with no experience in SolidWorks. I ran through a couple of
the tutorials that came with it and just played around with it in
general and got fairly good at it within a couple of weeks.
Disadvantage is that it's somewhat expensive, unless you can somehow
qualify for the educational version. http://www.solidworks.com/

At a previous job, we had both SolidWorks and Pro/Engineer (another 3D
CAD program) available, but most people voted with their feet for
SolidWorks. I never tried to use Pro/E; I never ran into anything that
I couldn't make SolidWorks do.

In 2007, you probably do want to use *some* kind of CAD program. Having
said that, the best-selling aircraft, ever, was designed by guys in
Wichita with drafting tables and slide rules.

Standard disclaimers apply; I don't get money or other consideration
from any companies mentioned.

Matt Roberds

wrote:

For 3D stuff: SolidWorks. The GUI was designed by someone that had
actually used a modern GUI (Gnome/KDE/OS X/Win9x) for more than a week,
unlike AutoCAD. (To be fair, none of this stuff _existed_ when AutoCAD
started up.) I started out with being kind of able to drive a 2D CAD
program but with no experience in SolidWorks. I ran through a couple of
the tutorials that came with it and just played around with it in
general and got fairly good at it within a couple of weeks.
Disadvantage is that it's somewhat expensive, unless you can somehow
qualify for the educational version. http://www.solidworks.com/

The OP should also consider Alibre. They have a free version that is
full-featured, limited only as to number of parts, some of the import
export formats, and some features of engineering drawings, but
includes full modeling capabilities. The OP can work with this to
decide if a solid modeler is what he wants, and then decide on
solidworks, alibre's full version, etc. The free version is at
http://www.alibre.com/products/xpres...ss_for_all.asp
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.

In article ,
says...


On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:18:09 -0000, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

I am a bit wary of AutoCAD. I remember back in the 1980's that its
popularity seemed to have more to do with its accessibility on a PC
than its stellar modeling capabilties.

Yes, AutoCAD's huge success was based simply on the fact that it could run
on a PC instead of a mini or a workstation. Because it was the first, it
became an entrenched standard.

It was designed by software programmers and not engineers so the interface
was never very intuitive. It began it's life as a 2-D drafting platform
and evolved into 3-D, so the early drawbacks of the system were just buried
in the core architecture of the software.

I can't comment on current CAD systems as it's been many years since my
involvement, but in the old days AutoCAD was considered quite mediocre
compared to newer systems.



AutoCad has continued to improve over the years, and it would be an error to
say it is poor or weak compared with its competitors. However its competitors
are not the parametric, 3D modelers you need for complex, fluid-form
mechanical models. You need one of the others mentioned for that.

For project management and building trades, AutoCad is very standard - You
can bring twenty contractors into a room and 19 of them will be running
AutoCad and can (and do) exchange files throughout a project.

It's perfectly possible to do 3D modeling and rendering with AutoCad and its
add-ons, and the latest versions have pushed this functionality further - but
it is not intended or well suited for 3D mechanical, beyond simple tasks.

The other freature it has, for drafters who need to acheive high output and
efficiency, is an excellent programming suite. Someone who draws similar
layouts and similar products all day every day can automate a very large
portion of their work.