The development of a microcomputer CAD/CAM and decision support system for the manufacturing of aerospace vehicles

Aircraft designing poses special problems in CAD (computer-aided design), because most CAD programs use basic geometric shapes as building blocks. Since it is difficult to describe aircraft components using basic geometric shapes, it is often necessary to input a large number of physical coordinates to describe the shape of aircraft components. By defining wings or fuselages using design parameters instead of physical coordinates, much time and energy is saved in the CAD process.

A microcomputer program called AeroCAD was developed to simplify the aircraft design process. AeroCAD uses wing and fuselage design parameters as inputs. This makes it possible to design a wing or fuselage with a fraction of the values of conventional CAD programs.

AeroCAD allows the user to build an aircraft from an existing database inventory of aircraft components; fuselage, wings, and tails. The inventory consists of components the user has previously created. The computer-generated aircraft can be rotated, translated, and scaled at the user's command.

Another program was written so Numerical Control coding could be generated from AeroCAD's data base. This made it possible to manufacture a miniature aircraft. The milled model could then be used as a wind-tunnel model.

AeroCAD was written for implementation on a microcomputer to take advantage of quick response times, ease of operation, printer output, and the ability to run AeroCAD on an inexpensive system. AeroCAD was written to have many useful features. The program can display normal color graphics or enhanced graphics on an IBM PC or PS/2.