Hello all, I recently purchased a CAD program, Turbocad 17, cause I am interested in R/C aircraft design. After weeks of research and trial and error working with this program everything seems to be straight forward. However I am having difficulty drawing airfoils. My question is there anyone who has experience with this program that can share their knowledge on an easy way to draw airfoils?

Does Turbocad do splines?

You can actually "draw" airfoils with a series of arcs, however changing the percentages relating to thickness of the airfoil etc. it's best to have an actual airfoil program. I like this one: http://www.compufoil.com/index.shtml

One thing also to consider is how you plan to cut parts. Lasers with stepper motors will sometimes struggle with an actual spline as an airfoil will be hundreds or thousands of small entities in a spline. Most reasonably priced CAM software packages will also ignore a spline or not allow you to apply toolpath for CNC cutting. This's where you can trace the spline generated from the software using 3-point curves. Join all of these curves into a closed poly-line entity and the laser and CNC will be super happy.
I like the compufoil because you can start with a base airfoil, adjust leading edge sharpness, trailing edge thickness, overall thickness percentage, chord, etc. and you can export to .dxf.

Used this software when I worked for a UAV company.


http://www.profili2.com/

Thank you for all the great advice.

terrycustom, thank you for the recommendation it was a big help. And let me just say that for a long time I have admired your work that you have posted over the years. So for you to answer my question and help me I am very grateful. Thank you!

Here is a link to many foils in dwg format.

http://m-selig.ae.illinois.edu/ads/c...ls_dwg_format/