Loftsman/P

The first step in any design process, particularly for streamlined bodies like airplanes and boats, is to define the shape of the outer surface. The process of creating a precise description of a surface is called lofting. Once a shape has been lofted, the coordinates of any point on the surface, volumes and centroids, the shapes of cross-sections and intersections with other lofted bodies can be obtained, and the layout of internal components can take place.

Loftsman/P is a lofting program for wings, fuselages, and hulls. It provides complex body shapes, normal and canted sections, wing-body, body-body and wing-wing intersections, contour maps, wetted areas, volumes, hydrostatics, wireframes, contour smoothing, full and partial fuel tank capacities in various flight attitudes, and facilities for designing flap and control surface sections and flap kinematics. It includes an extensible library of more than 200 NACA, Wortmann, and other airfoils. Available output formats include DXF and IGES, as well as fully formatted surface patches for Cmarc and VSAERO. Bodies, wings, deflected plain and slotted flaps, and many complete aircraft configurations can be meshed automatically. Ready-to-run Cmarc and Pmarc-12 input files, including wakes, are generated for bodies, wings, and wing-body-empennage combinations.

A lofting-only version of Loftsman, without the ability to generate Cmarc input grids, is available for $295. Contact peter@aerologic.com for information.

A demonstration version is available for download. It is fully functional, but will not save any output.

Examples : 

Hulls	Complex Geometries	Canted Sections	Automatic Meshing
Hydrostatics	Wireframes	Contour Smoothing	Flap Kinematics