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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- |
#2
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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? |
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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- |
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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 |
#5
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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- |
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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 |
#8
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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 |
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CAD Tools For Aircraft Design
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