OpenVSP 3.44.0 Released

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Lots of features working together to create a paradigm shift. I think this release will enable a huge change in how people use OpenVSP.

Hopefully you watched the OpenVSP Workshop so you know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, here is a 10 minute video that will give you an idea of what to expect.

Geometry Analysis Teaser Video

If you read the 3.43.1 release notes, then this release is a change of plans. What was planned for 3.44.0 is still coming (i.e. another exciting release soon) — but it makes sense to put this stuff out first.

This release is all about new Geometry Analysis tools in OpenVSP.

Aircraft Configurators perform all kinds of geometry based checks when laying out an aircraft. These checks were traditionally performed at the drafting board — today they’re performed manually by eye, or with the aid of CAD. OpenVSP can now perform many of these checks in an automated and quantitative manner not possible before.

There are some prerequisites to make all this work. Many geometry checks involve the behavior and position of the landing gear. OpenVSP now has a built-in landing gear component. Unlike using Stacks or other components to build an ad-hock landing gear model, OpenVSP ‘knows’ that this component is a landing gear, so it can rotate about the wheels, the axles, or the bogie as appropriate. It knows that gear struts can extend or compress and that tires can have different effective radii.

Some geometry checks involve shapes whose form can be inferred from other components in the model. For example, The arc that a propeller or rotor swings through (including flapping) can be inferred by the information in the propeller component. Auxiliary Geometry was added to provide a way to handle these situations. Expect more Auxiliary Geoms to be added in the future.

While most analysis tasks in OpenVSP are simple to set up and often can be set up once per model, I expect users to have many Geometry Analyses set up in their model, each with nuanced configuration and needing to be frequently revisited throughout the design process. The Geometry Analysis Manager was created to help organize all of this.

Many geometry checks are possible. This release includes a dozen new and different analyses to handle some common and interesting aircraft design use cases. Expect more geometry analyses to be added in the future.

The HumanGeom was refreshed a bit. Posing the head (nod and turn) was implemented to support visibility checks. Resolution of the model was increased. Posing the hands (wrist and forearm) was added at user request.

SubSurfaces (including Structures) were extended to support arbitrary XSecCurve SubSurfaces. This is mainly to support SubSurface cutouts when performing visibility checks, but will find usage elsewhere.

A new AC25.773-1 XSecCurve type was added intended to be used with the SuperCone Auxiliary Geometry for visiblity checks.

There is a lot here (about seven months of work in almost 500 commits)– and it will take some time to figure out how it all works together. The summary video linked above is a good start. This was also discussed at length during the OpenVSP Workshop Day 2. For now, you can watch the whole day on YouTube, but individual talks will eventually be separated out and linked to from the Workshop Wiki page.

Everyone should update to take advantage of this new capability. I can’t wait to see it put to use by users. Oh, there are some bug fixes too.

Features:

  • Landing Gear Component
  • Bogie modeling with suspension travel
  • Tire and rim modeling
  • Aircraft CG envelope specification
  • Auxiliary Geom Component
  • Propeller arc
  • Rotor burst cone
  • Off-nominal gear rotation Geoms
  • Composite clearance envelope Auxiliary Gear Geom
  • SuperCone
  • Geometry Analysis Manager
  • Results Viewer
  • External, Internal, and Self External interference checks
  • From point visibility
  • Height above plane distance check
  • Gear rotation (tail and wingtip strike angle)
  • Gear tipback and tipover angles
  • Weight distribution
  • Ground handling
  • Convex Hull in projected area
  • HumanGeom head motion (nod and turn)
  • HumanGeom hand motion (wrist and forearm)
  • HumanGeom improved resolution
  • XSecCurve based SubSurfaces
  • XSecCurve SubSurfaces in Structures
  • AC 25.773-1 XSecCurve type

Libraries:

  • Geometric Tools GTE included in src/external
  • Robust predicates included in src/external

Build System:

  • GTE Does not work with gcc-10. Updated Ubuntu 22.04 build to gcc-13.

Fixes:

  • Fix visualization of GeomEngine highlighted cross sections
  • Improve error message when advanced link output is not set
  • Fix height of attribute editor in XSecLayout for Fuse & Stack
  • Fix bug with HumanGeom positioning, some pose would move origin

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