Wings Forum

I need an inexpensive design & blueprint software for an experimental aircraft, 100% homebuilt from ground up. I want to build an aluminum, 4 seat, single engine, mono low wing airplane. It would be great if the software would do blueprints, parts list, wing design and placement. Inexpensive means way under $500, any ideas??

Thanks,
SpeedySB

Did you find a suitable low cost software program?  If so, I am also interested.  I purchased AirplanePDQ from http://www.davincitechnologies.com/  This program is good for initial sizing, but you have to do the calculations for the final design.  But, it at least will give realistic aircraft size & performance numbers for a proposed design.  They have a limited edition that you can download for evaluation.

Thanks.....

SpeedySB wrote:I need an inexpensive design & blueprint software for an experimental aircraft, 100% homebuilt from ground up. I want to build an aluminum, 4 seat, single engine, mono low wing airplane. It would be great if the software would do blueprints, parts list, wing design and placement. Inexpensive means way under $500, any ideas??

Thanks,
SpeedySB

I'm sorry, but there is no such thing. You can get aerodynamic analysis programs such as "PDQ" mentioned above, and you can get structural analysis programs such as NASTRAN, but you still have to design the airplane yourself in all its details. There is no program that will spit out "blueprints" or "parts list" for you.  It sounds (and please take no offense at this)   as if you are at the very bottom of the learning curve required to design an aircraft and computers can only help so much in that regard - you need to learn the basic principles first.

I took a couple of programs for a "test drive" and found that my drafting table and calculator are much easier for me to use.

DeltaCad from midnight software is a very good program and is free, if it times out after 30 days just reinstall it, or pay 40.00 for a registered copy, works with dxf and dc formats been using for years