Hi,

I was wondering if anyone would have any interest in developing a custom script to generate aircraft propeller blades. I wrote some Fortran 77 codes that design aircraft propellers. They output point files to be used with MoI or Rhino. It recently occurred to me that many of the users here may be willing/able to create a custom script to do this work. The challenge would be converting or using Fortran 77, as I know this is not a common language in programming circles. I know nothing of programming. Fortran 77 is something they taught, back in the day, to engineering students. I also encountered it everywhere I worked. So its what I know.

Currently there are several versions of PROP_DESIGN. If someone is interested in working on this, I could make a version that just created the geometry. From an MoI point of view, there would be some sort of onscreen dialog that allowed for a few basic inputs and then the blade(s) would appear onscreen. You could adjust the inputs and the blade(s) would update. So it would save a lot of time basically. Not that it takes much time to do it manually.

The options would be:

a) Review the existing codes as a basis to write a script.
b) Call the existing codes from a script.
c) Have me make a custom Fortran 77 code that you could call from the script.
d) Have me make a custom Fortran 77 code that you can review to make a script. Basically, just making it easier to find the code of interest.

There is a spreadsheet with most of the equations too, but that file doesn't generate any geometry, so not sure if that would be of use. Also, there was an issue with MoI 2.0 needing to do the geometry in mm to capture the small geometry features. The points are in units of meters. So care would be needed to make sure everything worked out ok. Moreover, that all the geometry is generated correctly and in the right units when all is said and done.

I don't do any cad work anymore, as I'm retired. I evaluated MoI because I wanted to be able to recommend something good to PROP_DESIGN users. I only have the no save version of 2.0 on my computer. Ideally it would be nice if the script ran on any version of MoI; 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 30-day trial, no save versions etc... If that's even possible. At least the current version and current demos. The script would be located with the rest here.

Not sure if you guys think this is a good idea or not. Just thought I'd ask.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Anthony Falzone

http://propdesign.weebly.com/