I am thinking of purchasing compufoil or profili. I apologize in advance if this topic has been beaten to death. Does anyone use either of these? I am trying to decide which to buy. Which one is best? I am looking to design the wing and bring it into 3D.

Thanks in advance,

Reggie

RP - I have been following your posts in the 1/2A engine building thread - very good stuff.

I'd try asking this question in the Scratch Building or aerodynamics forums. I have no experience with airfoil plotting programs, but maybe some of those guys do. I am interested in it as well.

Todd

I use Profili 2.2 (free upgrade from Profili 1) -- it is intuitive, has a significant number of functions and options and a database of about 2200 foils. You can also generate any of the NACA 4 digit airfoils directly or import plot data.

I have been very pleased with it and the price is more than fair given the functionality.

I also use Profili 2.2.

I have a macro that a friend wrote for me that will export airfoils into .dat files that I trace off plans in Deltacad.

Profili imports the .dat files into the library and I can generate rib sets for built up wings from plans that only show root and tip foam core templates.

Then I "print" the Profili rib patterns to pdf files that can be printed out on any inkjet printer.

It's actually a lot faster than all that sounds.

Here's an example of the finished pdf patterns that started out as root and tip foam templates on a set of plans:

After just looking at the screenshots, Profili seems more user intuitive. I am going to attempt to do a wing for an extra 300. I have a fuselage modeled, i just have to incorporate the formers and stuff. My intention is to scratch an extra since there arent many plans for them.

Just don't expect much from the dxf output of Profili. You certainly can't make a 3D model with it. It's fine if you will print the ribs from Profili.

Profifli 2.2 works fine for me and I believe can print in banner format if you want fully drawn plans for the wing. Includes LE and TE thickness and shapes etc. Its library of airfoils allow for fiddling with slow/fast-transition speed freeflight stuff as well.

I use Compufoil. It's extremely powerful and well worth the price tag. It isn't difficult to master, either. I've never needed any support. To give you an idea, my Blink was drawn 95% by Compufoil. I just exported to .dxf and made the firewall and modified a rib for the ply doubler. Most of my deltas are done this way.

It is expensive, though. Over the years I've paid him over $200. Updates are free, upgrades are steeply discounted. His upgrades are something else, though. It's like he started from scratch and made a better program.

Oh, the help file in Compufoil is really helpful.

Forgot to point out that BipeFlyers Tileprint has this function now too! www.blackflight.com

I use Compufoil and find it loaded with features, pretty easy to use, many functions are intuitive, and the tech support is top notch. It has a large library of airfoils plus a NACA generator, it is easy to make new airfoil files as well. I cut and pasted airfoil data from some website somewhere the other day and had a working file in Compufoil in no time. And the .dxf files import fine into AutoCAD.

MJD

MJD, about Compufoil, when you export a rib pattern as a .dxf file does the drawing have thousands of points along the curves or are they generated in a reasonable way that can be sent directly to a laser cutter in a cut file?

I have had to re-trace Profili's .dxf files to reduce the number of points to speed up cutting.

David

Dave, I use them straight out of Compufoil for lasercut parts. No problems at all.

Wow, this is good information. If you dont have to re-trace a rib pattern, maybe compufoil will be worth the extra cash.

pt, would you email me a dxf file exported from Compufoil? I'd just like to look it over.

Thanks,
David

Me too. Shoot me a copy as well Patrick

Thanks,
Reggie

I looked at Patrick's ribs from Compufoil. It looks like the average line is about 3% to 5% of the chord (about 30 to 20 points per surface). That is really good. Compufoil is definitely much better than Profili in that respect.

David

Tile Print has a database of over 1500 airfoils and can generate NACA 4 digit, 4 digit mod, 5 digit, 5 digit mod, 16 series or biconvex airfoils and export them as dat, dxf or vml files. It does not use a database, but reads DAT files directly from disk with no importing. It only creates the airfoils though - no spars etc. I use it for creating DAT files for my foam cutter and DXF files for designing planes.
All of the airfoils functions (generation, editing and exporting) work without purchasing an unlock key. The key is only required for printing.

You can download it from http://www.blackflight.com/tileprint/

Bipe, can I take a dxf from compufoil and drop into your program then generate the .dat file? IS that what you are saying?
If so I want it!

'Nudder happy camper CompuFoil user. I got it very early on and gladly pay for updates when they come out. Eric's a great guy and gives great support.

I think I will go for Compufoil. I have plans for a Giant scale Extra 300 with 116" wingspan. I want to model it using the info I have and scale it down to use a .15 engine. I want to design one like the extreme flight version.

[link]http://www.extremeflightrc.com/html/extra300e.html[/link]

Compufoil is a good program, easy to learn/use.
It is worth it. I think Eric will at some point attach a .dat file generator to it I hope. Right now I use another program to generate the files for my foam cutter. I like the planform function of compufoil for built up wings.
it is a good buy.

Not yet, but I have something that I've been working on that will do that. PM me if you want it.

If you are willing to use Deltacad - I know, cad purists frown on this program - I have a special macro that exports cad drawn airfoils into .dat files.

Here are two screen shots. The first is the macro running in Deltacad. The second is the resulting .dat file imported into Profili's library, ready to use. For me, anyway, it works perfectly.

Try this. I use autocad to open these files and get my airfoil profile for my drawings. The airfoils are opened up with a chord dimension of 1". You can scale them up from there.

http://www.ae.uiuc.edu/m-selig/ads/c...ls_dwg_format/



Hec

Thanks for the link, Hec. I can simply open those dwg files in Deltacad, run the macro and I have an instant dat file to import into Profili.

Well for my purposes I decided not to buy either one just yet. I had the profiles in Cad that I wanted for root and tip for a foam core wing. I decided to do my work in 3D. I took the root rib and tip rib and set them up with proper span then lofted the 2. From there it is very simple to create all the other ribs in between. I will design the wing in 3d, then it will be just a couple clicks to do a laser layout. The wing is for an Extra 300s.

Later,

Reggie