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Old 04-06-2012, 09:03 AM
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Nodd
 
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Default RE: Scratch Designed/Built Sailplane

A guy on another forum posted the following, here's my response:

Nodd, very nice design and great build. Gull wings are cool. What CAD do you use ?
Yeah I've always had a thing for gull wings. Back in the '80s I had plans for a big beautiful gull winged bird but never got around to building it. So 30 years later I'm finally getting around to making one. I used 3D Studio MAX for this plane's structural CAD work. For the aerodynamics I use X-Plane's Plane Maker feature. Here's a quote from X-Plane's website that sums it up well:

X-Plane is not a game, but an engineering tool that can be used to predict the flying qualities of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft with incredible accuracy.
X-Plane is pretty cool & a lot of fun to tinker with. As far a modeling the structure of your aircraft 3D MAX is kinda overkill. There's free/cheaper CAD software out there like Google SketchUp, Blender, AC3D etc. Any of those should let you design & print your plans.

Note I'd prefer not turn this thread into a discussion about CAD software, that's been covered to death in other threads. Just thought you might be interested in what I'm using.