The first public alpha release of the v3 re-write of VSP is now available for download. Please take it for a test drive. For real work, please continue using 2.3.0.

For the past two years, a dedicated team has been re-writing VSP from the ground up. The core v3 team responsible for this work so far is: Alex Gary, J.R. Gloudemans, Yue Han, David Marshall, and Rob McDonald.

The v3 effort is a major refactoring and rewriting of VSP. Although it should look/feel mostly the same to casual users, everything is different under the hood. I will write a series of blog posts in the coming weeks on the user-visible changes and how to make the most of them.

The alpha series will be numbered 2.9.X, leading to an eventual production-ready 3.0.0. This alpha release is not for production use. It … Read more

Version 2.3.0 contains one significant feature and a small bug fix. Version 2.3.0 is likely the last 2.X feature release for VSP. We will continue making 2.3.Y bug fix releases for a long time.

For some time, almost all developer effort has been focused on the pending 3.X project. VSP v3 is a near total rewrite keeping everything you love about VSP, but ushering in new features galore and a more maintainable code base. We hope to release a not-for-production-use alpha version of v3 for users to begin testing soon.

Fixes/features in this release:

• Add ability to model outer domain boundary in CFD Mesh.
• Match multi-body edge shares in CFD Mesh. (Thanks Sriram R.)

You can now generate a CFD Mesh including the outer boundary. Some volume grid generators need to start with a full… Read more

Version 2.2.5 contains a collection of bug fixes and small features. Some of the features look like bug fixes — and some of the fixes look like small features.

Fixes/features in this release:

• Save CFD export options.
• Automatically add *.vsp extension when saving.
• Add *.ram files to file-open dialog.
• Write propellers to XSec *.hrm files.
• Fixed PovRay *.inc file bug.
• Fix FEA elements not getting written.
• Fix 64-bit GLFont support and embed font in executable.
• Fix parameter linking and design files for propeller.

… Read more

The 2013 OpenVSP Workshop was held August 7-9 in San Luis Obispo.  Although smaller than last year, it was a great success giving opportunity for the VSP community to come together and share updates, best practices, and future plans.

For those of you who could not make it, most of the presentations are available online.  I hope to see you here next year.… Read more

Version 2.2.4 contains a collection of bug fixes that improve the CFD mesher. Various users have run into these problems, so if you use CFDMesh, you should certainly upgrade.

Bug fixes in this release:

• Guarantee attachment of wakes to constructing edge
• Relax tolerance to better match wakes down body splits
• Rewrite curve tessellation integration for quality in extreme cases
• Introduce curve split sources for mesh quality near intersections
• Size curve distance table to match underlying topology

The wake changes should help guarantee mesh topology when wakes are turned on. There were certain cases that could arise where a wake would not properly attach to the generating trailing edge, or the edge of a body that aligned with the wake. Both of these situations should be … Read more

The 2013 OpenVSP Workshop will be held 7-9 August in San Luis Obispo California. There is a $99 registration fee.

The agenda will include presentations and tutorials. Topics will range from introductory to advanced modeling techniques, connections between VSP and analysis tools, and updates on recent/ongoing developments in VSP.

Please email Rob McDonald if you would like to present at the workshop. Please include a title or short description of what you would like to present. We can’t guarantee to accomodate everyone, but we are trying to construct a comprehensive workshop.

The workshop information web site is online and will be updated as the agenda is set.

The workshop registration web site is also online and ready to receive your registration.… Read more

Version 2.2.3 contains a triplet of small bug fixes that have bitten some users. I have been putting these off waiting for an upcoming feature release, but now seems to be the time to get these out there.

Bug fixes in this release:

• Threaded version check
• Fix CG contribution of point mass components
• Fix CFDMesh half models when a surface is actually cut

Placing the version check in its own thread allows VSP execution to continue during the version check. This is significant for situations where the computer has internet connectivity, but the VSP web server is experiencing problems. The HTTP library used by VSP does not let you change the timeout from 60 seconds, so in these situations, VSP paused for 60 seconds on startup.

The CG contribution of point mass components was cal… Read more

Version 2.2.2 has been a long time coming. I have been waiting on a few features to make a 2.3.0 release, but finally decided it was better to get these fixes out sooner than later.

The mesh growth limiting step of CFDMesh ‘Build Target Mesh’ has been totally re-written. This new version should be vastly faster for just about anyone out there. The new BTM algorithm follows the surface topology rather than doing a full spatial search. For the rare cases where a full spatial search is still required, there is an optional flag to enable it. Even that mode should still be much faster than before.

Bug fixes in this release:

• Don’t close already closed file in readVspAirfoil (Linux crash)
• Fix MS_Wing chord update on scale
• Fix warnings on various

… Read more

Version 2.2.1 contains a number of small bug fixes.  One of thes fixes is particularly important — everyone should upgrade.

The nastiest bug caused components added from the ‘external’ default component set to have the ID number of that component.  If multiple such components were added, this could cause duplicate IDs in the model.  IDs are expected to be unique, so this causes significant problems.

The external BWB defaults that ship with VSP include a MS_Wing component with ID 42078344.  This is the most likely number to be duplicated.

If your model has duplicate IDs, you may see strange behavior including problems with parent/child relationships, parameter linking, and wetted area/volume totals from CompGe… Read more

VSP is incredibly effective at putting together advanced aircraft concepts that can ask fundamental “What if?” questions – and help to quickly get answers whether it’s worth continuing a new line of thought.  A recent conceptual design study that we conducted at NASA Langley asked the question “Is it possible to reduce the operating costs of an advanced General Aviation (GA) aircraft by a factor of 10?”  Asking such a question requires establishing a good baseline model (such as the Cirrus SR-20/22), and then putting together a good conceptual geometric representation of the proposed solution to compare to that State-of-the-Art (SOA) reference.  So I thought you’d like see one of the VSP model concepts we came up with to meet this question, and a … Read more