Do you remember I talked about the Aircrafts Frame of Reference? Well I just reprinted it here if I slipped your mind.
And I described it as a 3-D Cartesian (orthogonal right-handed) coordinate system (x, y, z), which is centered (origin) at the rear of the aircraft where:
- ROLL-axis passes through the propeller and tail. (Positive to the nose)
- PITCH-axis passes though wing tip to wing tip. (Positive to right wing)
- YAW-axis is a vertical axis, and is perpendicular to both the ROLL-axis, and PITCH-axis. (positive is down)
which contains a hierarchical model of the aircraft. In this way parameter data inputs can drive individual parts, such as control surfaces. Also parts may be attached to other parts in such a way that movement of one part will cause movement in an other.
Now what does all this mean?
For the most part aircraft designers or aerodynamicists have used spreadsheets to do the math for the aircraft. Bill Lear said "If it looks good, it will fly good." Now I really hate spreadsheets. To me this is like trying to stuff an elephant into that little tin of sardines. So why don't we use a database. I like MySQL or Postgress. So lets get started. So I use phpMyAdim to create MySQL databases, and tables. So first we need to consider what is an object. First are we going to use inches or the metric system in the aircraft.
- The object needs a name.
- The object should have a reference document.
- The name of object we are attaching to.
- The object needs an attachment point on the aircraft or it parent. In three dimensions (x, y, z).
- The object has mass or weight.
- The object size. In three dimensions (height, width, depth).
- The objects point of origin (x, y, z).
name: engine.1
reference: CSG_Leaflet_4_2003.pd
parent:
attachment point:
mass: 200 kg
size: 679, 670, 685
origin: 207, 335, 535 (center of the flywheel)
name: psru.1
reference: gear-drive
parent: engine.1
attachment point: 0, 0, 0
mass: 29.48
size: 437.36, 534.74, 235.407
origin:
name: popeller.1
reference: 72" warp drive
parent: psru.1
attachment point:
mass: 9.07
size: 1828.8, 1828.8, 101
origin: 914.4, 914.4, 101