[CorsAir1942]

AutoCad or microstation are good cad tools you can even do three d rendering of your surfaces. Keep in mind I have not drawn any air craft plans my experience comes from mapping. But the key is to do your plans in real world measurment in the CAD program then plot it out to what ever scale you require or have a cad company with a big enough plotter print it out for you. Also specific layers can be turned on or off for viewing or plotting. So for a specific plot one layer can have data on quarter scale dims , while another layer can have real world dims or 40 scale dims etc.
AutoCad and Microstation are expensive but if you have bucks you will never need another cad tool ever as you will be able to design anything.
Microstation seems to be more user friendly but both are good.
There are other less expensive CAD tools like Dyna Cad 3D, AutoDesk Quick CAD 2D they are good also.

[craigk]

I am using Microsoft Visio - which is not a real Cad Program,
It is a more a flow chart, type program but has scaling and simple design components. I found the learning curve on true cad programs to be flatter than I needed
see picture below of bulkheads done in Visio for the Zlin 50LS

[img][/img]

[tunes]

I see this an old thread, But I was wondering if anyone has any experience with RC CAD?
http://www.rccad.com/

Anyone,

Anyone?

[Mike Emilio]

If anyone needs their drawings plotted I can get it done for the price of the materials. It's basically $1.00 sq ft. (Kinko's charges $2.00 + tax)
Hard to beat! Toronto.

[Robw]

If any of you have kids in high school you may be able to get AutoCAD lite. It will do all the things that most of you would need to do but it won't do true 3d drawings. In most cases few people do true 3d drawings anyway.

Rob

[Guest]

I have used Acad R14, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005 its very simple to use and learn. There are lots of advanced features but as long as you get the basics (layers, blocks are nice to know how to use properly) then its a snap....you can sketch extremely quickly once you learn the keyboard shorcuts.

Forget 3D in AutoCAD its a waste of time, aquire any of the other 3D programs for that. I hear Rhino is pretty good but I have not used it, I use SolidWorks 2005 right now....very powerful but if you are planning on doing complex fuselage shapes you better have a smokin computer (at least 1GB Ram, and a super hot video card) and really know the software.

Solidworks is very cool as we also have the FEA (finite element analysis), CFD (fluid dynamincs) software installed so you can run simulations on any model you create I am working on a new spinner design for electric motors with it right now

Anyways, for plans etc Acad will work great....and with some visualization its easy to pull section views from a 2d drawing anyways.

[ken park]

I use a very simple program for my plan designs called Drawing Board!

Its a simple Drafting program. 2 dimensional but very easy to use.
The good thing it let me export to .dxf so I can get plans sent out to be printed or even to the laser cutters. My latest effort is now in production with Peter Richard of WELASERCUT

http://www.welasercut.com

The best thing of using a computer for design work is you can really speed thing up by only drawing one half and let then letting the computer make a copy and then flip it over and you got both halves done! Way cool eh!

[scaleguy]

Thanx ken.

Plane looks great. Thanx for the laser cutting link as well.