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NASA Open Sources Aircraft Design Software

Posted by samzenpus on from the build-a-plane dept.

First time accepted submitter sabre86 writes "At the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Nashville, NASA engineers unveiled the newly open sourced OpenVSP, software that allows users to construct full aircraft models from simple parameters such as wing span and fuselage length, under the NASA Open Source Agreement. Says the website, 'OpenVSP allows the user to create a 3D model of an aircraft defined by common engineering parameters. This model can be processed into formats suitable for engineering analysis.'"

4 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Strangely by vlm · · Score: 5, Informative

    There doesn't seem to be a Linux port at the moment?

    The link you're looking for is

    http://www.openvsp.org/zips/OpenVSP_2.0_community_src.zip

    They do not distribute a pre-compiled packaged linux version. Download source, compile, install locally, or wait for the inevitable Debian package to be created (assuming its "open source" license is DFSG free, I have not bothered to analyze it in detail)

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. Paper by vlm · · Score: 5, Informative

    All I can get from the website/wiki is thats its a tool that processes things, which is kind of vague.

    I found this paper via google:

    http://www.mae.virginia.edu/meclab/images/AIAA%20Paper%20--%20VSP.pdf

    Not a goatse link, honest.

    If you remember the microsoft flightsimulators of the 80s/90s you could list specs and it would make you a plane, like make me a plane with a 50 foot wingspan and then you would attempt to fly it. This is pretty much the same idea for spec'ing a plane but instead of simulating flying it, it dumps out a file containing the model that you can do "whatever" with. Something like clippy for aerospace cad "so you seem to be trying to make a twin engine turboprop, would you like a wizard to help with that?".

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  3. Foamies Anyone? by alphacharliezero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As someone who is into foam-built RC aircraft I am excited by the possibilities of this software. Electronics not included, a plane costs me about $10 to build. While I've built enough planes that I can just 'wing it' (See what I did there?), It would be fun to use this software to design RC planes...

  4. Re:MakerBot compatible? by Baloroth · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait, are you telling me we can download planes now? Sweet!

    Yes, RIAA, I totally would download a plane.

    --
    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton