WesWorld

Quoted

Originally posted by Desertfox
CATIA is definately cool. I'll be learning to use this upcoming semester.

All I get to play with is GIS programs, and they are no fun. Still, there are percs, they pay me to ride around on quadrunners and set things on fire at times

Quoted

Originally posted by Desertfox
You work for Cessna!

Yup, I sure do. I never thought I'd like working for a company that big, but let me tell you... it rocks. My boss is great, my coworkers are fun, the office is quiet and friendly, and there are good snack machines.

The only sucky thing is that I commute 120 miles every day...

Quoted

Originally posted by Desertfox
Columbia? That explains the plane, I was going to say, that does not look like a Cessna!

CATIA is definately cool. I'll be learning to use this upcoming semester.

*Nod* Cessna Textron picked Columbia/PacAir out of bankruptcy in... 2006, I think it was, and we're getting them back up into the game. The 400 and the Mooney Acclaim are fighting for the spot as the fastest civvie prop aircraft, and Mooney managed to edge us out when Columbia was having troubles - beat us by 8mph. But one of our technical guys told me that now that Cessna has the line, we're gonna chase them off with a stick and reclaim our rightful title!

And let me tell ya, Cessna's got some fun things coming up on the burner - the Columbus, for one, and the new CJ4, which we actually painted last week. (Yes... we've had it for months and it's just now been painted.) The CJ4 prototype has this big cylinder in the tail that is painted red and has "Warning! Explosive Device!" labeled all over it. I think it's part of an ejection system, but I don't work on the Citations, so I'm not certain.

The Citation Mustang, though... now THAT'S a cool toy! Humorously, although it's the smallest of the Citations, it was the one I found it easiest to fit inside the cockpit. The only disturbing part is that the onboard toilet is not screened in... two of the four cabin chairs are facing right at it, too. It has this lid which flips down and a seatbelt which allows it to be used for, say, the administrative assistant.

I work for Technical Publications (TechPubs) which uses CATIA to get wireframes of the planes for the manuals. I watched my boss demonstrate it the other day, and let me tell you, Foxy... when you get to learn it, you'll have a ball. CATIA lets you pick the materials your design uses, and it just figures out for you what kind of forces will make a specific part fail. My boss was telling me about a guy who uses CATIA to figure out how to stress flat pieces of metal using an air bladder in order so that it springs back to just the right amount of curvature. It is one SHINY piece of software.

Must have missed that news. It was about the time my subscription to Flight magazine ran out.

Didn't Columbia also have an RG version of the 400? It should be faster or was it only an Experimental (home built) version?

[dream mode on] Now if only I had enough money for a Mustang... [dream mode off]

I personally haven't used CATIA only Solidworks, but I've seen others use it and seen the finished results, they are impressive. And we can even have them be printed out in actual models, usually for wind tunnel tests. Just a month ago we finished a project at school using CATIA.

Here's the link to one of the drawings we made:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/ReneJr/Untitled.jpg

Quoted

Originally posted by Desertfox
Must have missed that news. It was about the time my subscription to Flight magazine ran out.

Didn't Columbia also have an RG version of the 400? It should be faster or was it only an Experimental (home built) version?

RG? You mean retractable gear? I don't think that was in the line we picked up. We got the 300, the 350, and the 400 - the 400 merely being a 350 with some avionics changes and a supercharger, and possibly a few other things; and the 300 isn't being built any more. So far as I know, all the planes we picked up have fixed gear, but perhaps there have been some experimentals...

I don't know what the plans for the 400 and company are, but I know our engineering team wasn't very enthusiastic about one plan proposed: Columbia designed in autoCAD, and we figured our engineers would redraw the planes in CATIA... but the engineers apparently are disinclined to do that bit of work. I expect that any future 350/400 models will come out when the engineers get around to working on that, and decide to throw in things like retractable gear and the like.

After all, we have to beat Moonie. Who names their airplane company after a junior high prank?!

Found the plane I was thinking of. It's the Lancair IV. It's related* to the Cessna 400, but is only available as an Experimental (kit built) aircraft. It has rectractable gear and some versions are capable of speeds over 300kts and 30,000ft, with turboprops.

*Columbia decended from Lancair, and the Columbia 300 was a FAA certified non-RG version of the Lancair kits.

Quoted

Originally posted by Desertfox
Found the plane I was thinking of. It's the Lancair IV. It's related* to the Cessna 400, but is only available as an Experimental (kit built) aircraft. It has rectractable gear and some versions are capable of speeds over 300kts and 30,000ft, with turboprops.

*Columbia decended from Lancair, and the Columbia 300 was a FAA certified non-RG version of the Lancair kits.

Yup. A few of the engineering drawings we're working through have "LANCAIR" stamped on them, though most were Columbia. The 300 isn't being made anymore, though in a couple weeks we're going to redo the manual for that since Cessna picked up the service contracts...

Quoted

I personally haven't used CATIA only Solidworks, but I've seen others use it and seen the finished results, they are impressive.

You can use SolidWorks to do the same thing as well. Enter all the material values and it'll compute weights, stresses and the interactions between the parts. It just gets extremely complicated very quickly. One of my mates is part of team doing some submarine stuff. You can do really cool stuff with it. Best I've seen so far is typing in a NACA airfoil number. That then spits out a huge amount of data points which are imported into CAD, and then revolved to get a 3D airfoil with nice low drag characterisitcs. I'll have to see if I can get hold of some of the animations they did.