CAD Program

[Ed Alt]

Well, for doing any airfoiled part, nothing beats Compufoil. 
http://www.compufoil.com/index.shtml  You can easily do lofted rib sets or 
make foam core templates, has an extensive airfoil library which you can 
modify, tons of features.  Does planform views too.  You can export the 
drawings to .dxf format to import into another CAD program.  You wind up 
having to clean up some stuff that comes with the exported drawing to make 
it work well, but it's really easy to do.  You should really read up on 
their features closely, because they have all the touches you need in that 
software.  They have a new 3D version that I never tried, but it looks 
interesting.  Also, they give excellent technical suppotr.

IMSI TurboCad http://www.turbocad.com/ has a really nice 2D/3D CAD package 
that can usually be had for a reasonable price.  They often run specials.  I 
think I paid something like $99 for TurbCad Deluxe version 9.  Looks like 
right now version 11 is going for $129.  It takes some time to learn it, but 
there's good online help and some books available that will get you through. 
If you put yourself into it, you could be drawing formers & fuselage's in a 
weekend.  Don't know if this is the best choice for a full CAD package, but 
I've been real happy with mine.  It's great for doing Monokote cutting 
templates. Currently experimenting with getting Monokote trim laser cut.  If 
this works, I will never buy vinyl graphics again.

Ed


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dieter Rozek" <rozekd at earthlink.net>
To: <discussion at nsrca.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 1:26 AM
Subject: CAD Program


> Forgive me if this topic already has been discussed but I'm looking into 
> getting a good CAD program for drawing model aircraft plans.
> I already have ModelCAD 2000 but I find this to be cumbersome and not very 
> user friendly.  The curves that it draws are
> often aliased (jagged) and when I click on one object the other items 
> disappear so it's not very easy to see what you are creating all at once.
> Working in the layers seems rather clunky.  Any thoughts/suggestions on 
> this and other programs would be greatly appreciated.  I work in graphic 
> design
> using sofware like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop among others.  I find 
> their interface to be relatively easy to use but they're not really
> designed for drawing 1:1 scale plans.
>
> Regards
>
> Dieter
>
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