Suitable CAD packages for microlight project

I am about to begin design of a microlight aircraft. I would be interested to hear recommendations of suitable CAD software packages to run on a PC (sadly I don't yet have a Mac!). equally valuable would be any advice on packages that would be good to avoid. I am interested in conducting a finite element analysis on the structure so this feature would be useful if available. Many thanks, Paul.

It depends on how much money you are willing to spend.

Nigel Waterhouse & Associates
Aeronautical Consulting Engineers

Transport Canada and F.A.A approval & certification of fixed and rotor wing aircraft alterations: Structures, Systems, Powerplants and electrical.  FAA PMA, TC PDA.
n_a_waterhouse@hotmail.com

For cheap/free FE stuff, try the following:
http://femci.gsfc.nasa.gov/links.html
http://www.engr.usask.ca/~macphed/finite/fe_resources/fe_resources.html
http://www.mystran.com/
http://www.femdesigner.co.uk/ (and http://www.cyberlogic.org/)

You might well find a reasonably priced out of date version of Autocad second hand.

Nigel, fair point regarding money. No, I'm not after a full house CATIA system. What I need is a solid basic single user system that has some FEA capability. How much am I willing to spend on this? There is enough budget behind the project to ensure adequate funds for a wide range of packages. What I am interested in is which one (or ones) would colleagues recommend?

Many thanks to RPStress for the sites.

Download Prodesktop Express from PTC. Excellent and powerful free 3D and is compatible with Pro-Engineer files.

I would think that SolidWorks would be a good system if you could afford it.

You might check out the following site.

http://64.219.184.27/csi/index.htm

This is a new, cheap cad package, geared toward preliminary design.  By cheap I mean around 3 grand.

I believe they are releasing the software this fall.

Hope this helps...

Regards,
Grant Wittenborn
Aerospace Engineer
www.darcorp.com

Pro E Express is definitly your best bet.

Or, if you're not too fussed about using slightly dodgy software, you can always use
kazaa to get just about any software package that takes your fancy.  Even some CFD stuff if you're lucky.

If it's for personal use most big software houses seem to turn a bit of a blind eye a bit of home piracy as it increases their user base.  A guy from Edgecam told me they monitor P2P communities just to see how popular their software is in comparison to the competition.

Excessive accuaracy is a sign of poor breeding. -Socrates.

Hi!
If you want a simple CAD package that is easy to use and will open AutoCad drawings, this program will also do good 3d then I have the package for you.

The product is TurboCAD and a free down load is available from   http://www.imsisoft.com/free/  this is an full version also the site www.CADcourse.com provides limited free training on the product.

the web site www.turbocad.com provides symbol downloads for a very inexpensive

Hope this helps

Ian

I had done a study of CAD  systems for my company and we selected SolidWorks.  I had always been a  Pro E fan myself, but SolidWorks just beats it cost and is far more flexible when it comes to importing drawings made on another system.  You can a decent aSolidWorks package for about $6K and it includes some FEA with it.

Joe

Another suggestion would be Alibre, not expensive but quite a decent functional parametric modeller. Check out www.alibre.com for more info. It comes in three configs, $295 basic, $695 std and $995 professional. It has one of the best online training and collaboration systems around. However it is short in some modelling areas that often require work arounds but the online help and support can provide all the help you should need.

I have found TurboCAD to be an extraordinary package for the price.  It does some things that you can't do with AutoCAD, and it has a much shorter learning time than the others; but am not sure how useful it is in the tooling and manufacturing interface.