“The most important tools in our design process are clearly those used for the initial design and design validation,” says Richard Schulz, managing director at Adept Airmotive Ltd., a South African manufacturer of general aviation engines for the light aircraft market. If the initial conceptual design of a product is not good, no downstream applications will save it, making the effective use of flexible 3D solid modeling tools crucial to getting proposed designs off to a solid start. Their answers gave us an inside glimpse into the vital issues facing companies designing, building, and supporting aerospace products today. To find out how designers are doing that, we asked a handful of them what tools they considered indispensable.

The aircraft’s beta prototype is currently being designed with plans for full production by the end of 2011. is a light sport aircraft that can fold up its wings to become a road-legal vehicle. The Transition roadable aircraft being developed by Terrafugia Inc. And all this is taking place while manufacturers meet and exceed the strenuous flight-testing and certification processes required of them as they cut significant time and expense out of the overall design cycle. To help manufacturers toward that end, a myriad of software tools-many closely integrated with CAD tools-are being used to create digital prototypes of entire aircraft, to view and manipulate parts and assemblies of parts in digital design review sessions on the Web, and to simulate the reentry of NASA’s next-generation crew capsule into Earth’s atmosphere. used Inventor 3D solid modeling software from Autodesk to design its 320T, a 320-hp general aviation engine with a compact design that offers low vibration levels and high structural integrity. Put the right tools into the right hands and you’re halfway there.Īdept Ltd. Build a lighter, stronger, cheaper airframe-with fewer components-and the world will beat a path to your door.

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