CAD in aeronautics

✍ Scribed by Alan Pipes

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 298 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0010-4485
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-4485(79)90013-7

✦ Synopsis

design, structural analysis, avionics and production are still being done separately, on different systems and with little interaction. This was even demonstrated in the structure of the one-day seminar on CAD in aerodynamics. The most challenging area is organization, said J B Jackson, British Aerospace, Kingston, in his opening address. Large organizations have to be changed, traditional departmental and skill boundaries must be crossed. This is going to be difficult: the USA is 10 years ahead of the UK in computer-aided production control and the line managers responsible for setting up the systems are now Vice-Presidents with an appreciation of the problems and in a real position to give organizational support. In the UK, we have yet to educate the decision makers.

Hardware is another challenge: how do we keep up with the rate of change? In 1975 Hawker-Siddeley predicted their hardware needs for the 1980s based around a central processor. If that same system were designed now, it would probably comprise specialist machines around a data highway. Mainframes, numbercrunchers, array processors, a database computer, teleprocessors, word processors and intelligent terminals would all be connected through a telephone exchange. Future strategy must avoid conversion transfer yet allow new specialist machines to be used. Microprocessors, with say microCOBOL, could be the answer.

Software should be engineered with designer participation, ideally with separate data and communications functions. There is a need for data commonality: from the conceptual design through to product support.