PDAS home > AeroSoft
Public Domain Aeronautical Software (PDAS)

There are a number of people and organizations that offer software and information that may be of value to aeronautical engineers and aviation enthusiasts. I have looked at all of these sites carefully and am favorably impressed by each one. However, I haven't checked out all of the software, so this is not a professional recommendation.

Link Comments
AeroLogic The Personal Simulation Workshop - Loftsman for geometric layout of external lines, Cmarc for flow analysis, Postmarc for interpretation of results. Peter Garrison
AERONAUTICA 3D Creates aircraft and aviation oriented 3D computer models. DXF files, thousands of polygons
Aircraft Designs Books and Software plus consulting. Martin Hollmann, Rick McWilliams
Airfoil Design Workshop A useful wing lofting utility. Terry Majewski.
Airplane PDQ and Airfoil Optimizer An introductory airplane design program from DaVinci Technologies. Gil Crouse
Analytical Methods Aeronautical consulting and software. Strong on user support and good interfaces for analysis codes.
AVID LLC AVID (Air Vehicle Integrated Design) offers aircraft design tools and consulting. Paul Gelhausen and Sam Wilson.
CADRE Analytic Finite element analysis software for structural analysis.
Calmar Research Among other things, Calmar offers Tranair and AGPS originally developed by Boeing.
CFD Resources Online Links to many sites with CFD software
Cise The Computing in Science and Engineering Portal. This is a joint project of IEEE and AIP and is based on the well known journal. It is to become a software repository, but right now it is more promise than delivery.
Conceptual Research Information on books Aircraft Design - A Conceptual Approach (3rd ed.), Simplified Aircraft Design for Homebuilders, RDS Software and Dan's short course. My favorite book list. Dan Raymer
DARcorporation Advanced Aircraft Analysis (AAA) and other design and analysis programs. U. Kansas, Jan Roskam, William Anemaat
Desktop Aeronautics LinAir,Panda,SAND,ADW,Plot. Also Applied Aero textbook on CDROM. Ilan Kroo.
Dreese Software Airfoil design code. John Dreese.
FlightGear Open Source flight simulator
FoilSim Interactive airfoil (and baseball) solver. Good graphics. From NASA Glenn. Tom Benson.
Laney How to obtain free CFD programs.
Lissys PIANO is industry-standard software for commercial aircraft analysis and competitor evaluation, with a calibrated database of planes.
M H Airfoils Lots of good info relating to model airplane aerodynamics. Martin Hepperle.
Mattingly Jack Mattingly has published a guide to the collection of programs that he has developed. Propulsion and performance oriented.
MetaComp Technologies CFD++ program
NACA.BAS A coding of the NACA airfoil geometry in Basic by Dave Lednicer
Nielsen Engineering and Research Aeronautical consulting and software. Strong on missile aerodynamics, store separation, etc.
Open Channel Open Channel Software has most of the old COSMIC collection of software from NASA. They refer to them as NASA Classics. There is some overlap with PDAS, but Open Channel has a wide assortment of codes, not just aeronautical.
Optimal Aircraft Design ADS - Aircraft Design Software for the analysis and design of any aircraft configuration from UAVs to light transport aircraft. Didier Breyne.
Pilot 3D 2D/3D NURB surface design software that includes the UIUC airfoil database. Special tools include the ability to smooth the raw airfoil offset data, create 3D foil shapes, and output 2D/3D information for construction. Steve Hollister.
SoarSoft Software CompuFoil3D program for airfoil plotting and lofting. Lots of features to help model airplane builders. Eric Saunders
Supersonic Airfoil Uses the oblique shock and Prandtl-Meyer expansion functions to compute the inviscid aerodynamic force on a wedge airfoil with attached shocks. Reshape the wing or change the angle of attack and watch the pressures and forces recompute. Implemented as a java applet. Evgeni Kudriavitski.
TetrUSS NASA Tetrahedral Unstructured Software System. A Rapid Aerodynamic Analysis and Design Capability For Complex Configurations by Non-Expert Users.
Virginia Tech Links to many useful small programs from Bill Mason and William Devenport. Highly recommended.
VisualFoil VisualFoil airfoil analysis program. Patrick Hanley
Vrand Finite Element and Optimization Software. Gary Vanderplaats
WinFoil Another airfoil analysis/design program. Emphasis on model airplanes. Malcolm Hardy
Xfoil XFOIL is an interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils. Mark Drela and Harold Youngren. Check the Virginia Tech site for valuable notes on running Xfoil.

Go to the aeronautical information page or the web links page.

PDAS home > AeroSoft
Public Domain Aeronautical Software (PDAS)