Pietenpol Airframe project

[rkirk77]

Hi Guys,

I have been trying for days to make this airframe and I am getting a bit lost.  I have tried using the Frame Genorator to get the correct material (4130 chromoly steel with  .035 wall thickness) but it doesn't exhist. 


What is the best way to reproduce this structure?

Edited by
Discussion_Admin

At users request

[blair]

Frame-Gen would be the easiest way. I don't have the files at home (back at the office) to show how to Author componets for Frame-Gen. This would be the easiest to Author your own tube to use.

[rkirk77]

How exactly do you author your own pipe dimensions in FG?

[vex]

Here's the basic help file for the Frame Generator (if you ever have a question regarding a feature in Inventor you can hover over the tool and then press f1 to bring up the specific help relating to that tool. It's a handy feature I use almost daily): http://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-FAF2FFB2-8965-482C-9691-530954AF59E1

In particular if you look here: http://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-D78D9AEB-0DE4-471C-ADBC-543669BEDB71
You will find what you are looking for.

Now, I offer you some unasked for advice, so please take this for what it's worth. I would suggest foregoing the frame of the aircraft until after you have developed the body. I understand it's canvas wrapped, but if you're going to produce the body in a final type of model I would suggest getting the exterior skin handled first and then progressing to integrating the frame. Your thin walled structure (aka body) may cause you more trouble than it's worth to model it first and then attempt to make the skin join it... though the more I think about it, I suppose if you used the frame and derived a part at the assembly level you could put 3D-sketch points at the various frame locations and then make a 3D spline run longitudinally, Then run a loft from one end to the other using the longitudinal splines as rails. That may actually work now.

I tried to do something similarly in 2012 and had limited success until I did the body first and mated the internal structure to it after the fact (Human powered aircraft).

[blair]

This should help.

[rkirk77]

Oddly, it says that it cannot do tubing.. lol

[blair]

It does round pipe as well as round stock, which is really the same as Tubing. Possibly it's an early PDF when Fram-Gen was first introduced.