What’s New

v0.5 – not yet released

  • Link your wing structures together to make multipanel wings.  For example a classic “polyhedral” glider wing.
  • Much improved (and far more buildable) control surface and hinge designs.
  • Support for flat stock trailing edges (similar to the guillows style wing builds.)
  • Vastly improved part nesting in the layout sheets.
  • I have actually used the program for some laser cut tests!  This is exciting. 🙂

v0.4 – December 27, 2013

  • Control surfaces!  Specify the hinge line and the start/end station and your control surface is built automatically.  Supports multiple independant control surfaces per wing.
  • Version checking.  Alert if a newer version is available for download.
  • Warn if trying to build before all design changes have been saved.
  • Delete wings from previous design when opening a new design.
  • Spars are now always vertically aligned after rib is rotated for twist/washout.
  • Stringers are always aligned flush/tangent to the surface of the rib.
  • Saved .mad files (xml format) are now beautified rather than all stuffed together on a single line (better for version control or human editing.)
  • If asking to view the design in 3d, check if file is saved (clean) and built since last save.
  • Fix output of .svg (plans/templates/laser cutter sheets) so they are created in the same folder as the original .mad file.

v0.3 – December 19, 2013

  • Add a suite of examples that illustrate many of the software’s capabilities.
  • Support for curved chord/taper wings.  This is done by defining a spline curve that evaluates to the chord at that point in the wing.   See docs and examples for more details.
  • Support for curved sweep wings.  This is probably a less useful feature, but is available nonetheless.  Instead of specifying a sweep angle, a spline curve can define the amount of forward/aft shift of the wing ribs relative to the span of the wing.  Again see the docs for specific explanation and examples.

v0.2 – December 18, 2013

  • Add helper functions for selecting root and tip airfoils.
  • Support for separate size root and tip chords (allows generation of tapered wings.)
  • Changes to combo box trigger internal change detection.
  • Clean/dirty management, system suggest save if design is changed before quitting or loading a new design.
  • Deleted structures also make the model ‘dirty’ (needs to be saved.)
  • Bug fixes.  (Found an edge case in the generation of 3d sheeting that was exposed on wings that blend from one airfoil to another.)

v0.1 – December 15, 2013

  • Initial GUI front end interface to working back end build library.
  • Single .exe windows version via PyInstaller
  • InnoSetup setup packaging for Windows
  • Bug fixes when generating 3d model for wings with sweep and dihedral.
  • Integrated creator, builder, and viewer into single GUI.
  • Simple XML format for saving model designs.

v0.05 (unreleased) – February 21, 2013

  • Switch to  using a polygon clipping library for many internal functions (making cutouts much more robust.)
  • Wing skinning
  • Shaped lightening holes (that follow the interior contour of the rib)
  • Support for “linked” wing panels (i.e. a polyhedral glider wing.)
  • Visualize the exact model that is generated in 3d.
  • Variety of bug fixes and clean ups.

v0.0 (unreleased) – February 2, 2013

  • Initial revision
  • Airfoil blending, scaling, rotation
  • Smoothing, resampling, and adaptive fitting of airfoil curves
  • Cutting out basic shapes from airfoils for leading/trailing edges, spars, stringers, lightening holes, etc.
  • Best fit of leading edge cutout.
  • Best fit of trailing edge stock to airfoil shape.
  • Generates actual size build plans
  • Supports curved chord/taper function
  • Supports curved sweep function
  • Higher level function: cut flaps or ailerons into the wing structure.