On development environments for aircraft modeling

Modeling and optimization tools for conceptual aircraft design are evolving away from specialized text-based standalone executables towards interactive general purpose tools. Providing better control over the design of complex systems was attempted by introducing a special modeling layer between the aircraft designer and the actual computer code representing the modeling and optimization task. This distanced the design engineer from actual programming effort, enforcing as well as supporting creation of well-structured designs. This change can be seen as reflecting the parallel evolution of integrated development environments for modeling and programming software products. Based on the experience we gathered during the conception and implementation of the conceptual design tool CDT, we discuss in this paper a number of issues we identified concerning the modeling of aircraft in a multi-disciplinary environment. These issues include the role of modern software development environments as the general purpose modeling frameworks, as well as the need for generality in the modeling environment when developing unconventional aircraft concepts, the useful incorporation of textual and graphical elements and the identification of desirable elements in a modeling environment.