hi bemfarmer,

no not dumb questions. i'll post some pics to help out, but for now i'll answer the easy ones. The rails can be used to create splines directly. those points are good. one set is for the leading edge. one is for the trailing edge. the other is for the 1/4 chord point. that one is for reference. its a good idea to have it in there just as a spline, but not used to make the blade. this way you can measure the radius of the blade and have it match the fortran code. also people may want to know where it is to apply loads and so forth if doing analysis.

the airfoil points are straight out of a NACA document (NACA is the predecessor of NASA). They did a lot of airfoil work back in the day. The NACA 65A series of airfoils yields good transonic performance. Meaning they can travel about Mach .7 efficiently. Or the speed of a common commercial airliner. The only problem is these points don't work out well when making the splines. So this set has to be used as control points. I added in a few points to help make the leading and trailing edge curves. When all is said and done you will end of with four curves you can join together. Then use that as the profile to sweep along the leading and trailing edge rails. This is where I need to show some pictures of how to get the four curves. Or maybe a screencast. I'll figure something out and send you the info.

Sounds like you have enough controls with the scripting. I only use a handful of tools and you mentioned them all in your last e-mail. So I think you have access to everything you need.

Anthony