Light Aircraft Association

Hi,

the EAA just announced a deal for their members to get a free student licence of Solidworks. See this: http://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/eaa-membershi ... rce-center

Anyone interested in aircraft design, or just sorting mods would find this a useful tool, it is becoming the industry standard. It has a bit of a steep learning curve but I guess we will have members familiar with it and can we can probably organise training using our own resources. I work in that field but am not an expert on Solidworks myself. I can probably provide a venue for training if needed though.

Anyway, I think it would be great if the LAA could do a similar deal for it's membership. Hopefully Brian or Steve Slater will pick up this post and offer an opinion.

regards

Colin

Sorry, I duplicated this, had intended to delete this one but can't seem to do that..........

Hi,

the EAA just announced a deal for their members to get a free student licence of Solidworks. See this:

http://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/eaa-membershi ... rce-center

Anyone interested in aircraft design, or just sorting mods would find this a useful tool, it is becoming the industry standard. It has a bit of a steep learning curve but I guess we will have members familiar with it and can we can probably organise training using our own resources. I work in that field but am not an expert on Solidworks myself. I can probably provide a venue for training if needed though.

Anyway, I think it would be great if the LAA could do a similar deal for it's membership. Hopefully Brian or Steve Slater will pick up this post and offer an opinion.

regards

Colin

A great initiative. Well done EAA! Brian and I are investigating to see whether we can do similar. Watch this space!

I'd have a copy at student prices.

Onshape is an alternative, cloud based option to solidworks at $100 per month. Before you get to that point you can use Onshape free of charge up to a number of files and size capacity. Well worth a look.

In the spirit of the LAA, if you require someone to do the training I'll volunteer as I have around 20,000+ hours professionally on Catia and around 2,000+ hours professionally on solidworks.

I've used 3D CAD professionally since 1990 ish

Martin

Thanks Martin.
I haven't had a response from the UK people who look after Solidworks who promised to get back to me. I'll chase them up.
Rgds, Brian

I haven't used SolidWorks for many years but it is a very powerful engineering tool. I have heard some people using Google Sketch-Up for aircraft design but it does create 2D drawings as well.

ProEngineer could be another option.

I would also like to see the LAA get a subscription for one of these programmes as well as a stress analysis (including finite element stress analysis) programme such as PATRAN or NASTRAN. That said, I remember using SW for FEA at uni.

Hi Gary,

I haven't used Solidworks before, but have played around with AutoDesk Inventor which is comperable. Am not sure that Sketchup is as optimised for the sort of work I have in mind (I do have the Pro Version as I work for Trimble who bought it off Google years ago).

I renewed my EAA subscription on the back of this benefit as it will help me with the various tasks I keep doing for people converting 2d drawings of aircraft bits into CNC files for water-jet or laser cutting. The unfolding options should save working out bend allowances manually.

I believe that LAA Engineering do have a finite element analysis package, possibly Nastran(?), but that's something I don't feel I know enough about anymore to get involved in.

Thumbs up for Solidworks so far though, I got the licence within minutes of paying my EAA membership renewal and the tutorials are very easy to follow. Probably for the few of us in the LAA that might use it, joining the EAA makes sense.

Regards,

Colin

Hi,

Just responded to another post about Solidworks, am afraid I unwittingly created two threads the other being in Design.

As I was keen, I renewed my lapsed EAA subscription, which when taking the electronic option for their magazine (not a patch on ours), was £36 a year.

Once Brian has more information we should discuss setting up a course.

Regards,

Colin

I was going to sign up for the EAA, and this offer gave me the push. It's installed but I was disappointed to see that the basic stress analysis bit is not included, or did I do something wrong during install?

Not had time to play with it yet, but it looks as if it will be a steep curve, as all these programs are. Currently a TurboCAD user. I want to work through the available tutorials first, but I may call upon Gary's offer if I get stuck

The LAA have Strand 6 (on a laptop IIRC), and I don't think anyone in the office knows how to use it. There was an idea to make it available at Turweston, but I cannot see how that will work, especially when learning how to use it.

Course sounds like a good idea.

For basic 2D work, I have been using Dassault's DraftSight quite successfully, it has certainly done all I wanted for creating waterjet patterns and full size ribs etc. on my Menestrel project (albeit in multiple A3 sheets as I don't have easy access to a plotter). I tend to use Sketchup for my 3D printer but it is a bit flakey sometimes (might be user competence issues....)

I am a fan of free and open source tools wherever possible - it might be worth creating a list of tools, both free and commercial for the Engineering section. There are a number of other tools such as OpenFOAM for CFD but this is probably a significantly more complex topic than FE stress analysis.

Tony Razzell

Ian Melville wrote: The LAA have Strand 6 (on a laptop IIRC),

Blimey, I used Strand 7 some time ago (2000) and it was basic back then. So strand 6 would be even worse.

I've recently used Comsol which was really great but also really expensive. The only caveat is that with all FEA programs it's pretty much GIGO if you don't know how to use FEA.

I've used Solidworks for about 9 years; it is a really powerful package, but it is another language to learn.
I took a City and Guilds level 2 course to get started and it helped a lot.
Some of the things I have drawn early on, are very awkward - there are always 6 different ways to design something.....the more you use it, the better your designs.
I don't think it is something you will pick up easily, unless you have some similar experience AND are very stubborn......
I'd be more than willing to help anyone that wants to use it - I could get you started if you are keen to learn.
I am sure many colleges provide the courses to use it.

I've done all my metal fittings for an Air Camper on Solidworks - not because I needed to, but because it is enjoyable! Very satisfying.

Mark B.