We are happy to announce that the Wing Helper 1.3.0 is officially released and ready for download from our web site for all operating systems (Windows 7 and newer, 64 bit Linux , OSX 10.8 and newer)

Wing Helper is a state of the art 3D CAD program for design of RC plane models. Wing Helper is oriented towards ambitioned RC modelers, who are beyond building models according to ready made plans, and who want to start designing, building and flying their own creations.

With Wing Helper, we chose a novel approach to modelling. We don't want to stand in the way of your creativity with arcane and inconsistent user interfaces, multitude of options of suspicious level of usefulness, or by imposing long and tedious work-flows on you. Wing Helper is strongly favoring the simplicity and fast visual representation of all steps in the design process. You will be surprised how few clicks are actually needed to produce great results!

In the version line 1.x, the Wing Helper focuses on the definition of the main wing - the very heart of every plane. for the future, we foresee adding support for defining empennage, fuselage, electronics, investigating the physical plane characteristics, etc. Which of these functions we are going to add to Wing Helper and in which order will largely depend on your input and your requirements.

1.3.0 introduces a great variety of exciting new features, most notably the support for non-trapezoid wing forms. You can find the complete list of all new functions and improvements on our web page.

The new video tutorials, for the first time also including an audio commentary, can be found in the documentation section.

Original announcements and discussions on RCGroups can be found here (version 1.0) and here (version 1.2).

We are looking forward to hearing from you!


Best regards,

Aleksandar Pozgaj
Wing Helper e.U.

Wing Helper 1.3.0 Tutorial 1 (English) (57 min 3 sec)

Wing Helper 1.3.0 Tutorial 2 (English) (30 min 22 sec)

Hi Alex!

I have finally started playing with WingHelper. I am finding it very easy to use and educational as well. My first little trial run project is now nearing completion. It's a replacement wing for what's left of an old Horizon Hobby Typhoon. I wanted it lighter and slightly larger and I think I will meet all of my goals. Right now I can only hand cut the parts. The plan is to get a CNC cutter or laser cutter in the future. Since I am hand cutting I used the PDF output for the templates. It would be nice if more of the parts were available on the PDF output. An output of the ribcomb would have helped. In general maybe having a select box for which parts to include on the PDF export would be a good feature.

Since this is an experimental bash... The only new wood used was a sheet of 1/16 (1.5 mm) balsa for the ribs and rib comb. The rest is left overs from other kits thru the years. You can see some of the old cut lines.... I am not a master builder or a plane designer, but I do like to experiment. WingHelper will let me do more than I used to be able to do.

I have just installed 1.3.0 without any issues. Please keep up the good work!

Steve

Hello Steve,

thank you for the kind words, I'm very happy to hear Wing Helper is doing you a good service!

Considering PDF output, you are right, it's quite a lot less feature-rich than the DXF output. I'm planning to extend that one day, but it's currently "overridden" by more frequently placed feature requests. Until that gets done, there is a work-around using the DXF output: you can find the comb (which is probably the most useful one) in the DXF export. For my tests, I mostly use LibreCAD, which is free of charge. Just open the DXF file in LibreCAD and select the items you need. From there, you can either send them to the printer or into a PDF file, if you plan to produce plans.

Your wing looks gorgeous! It's still so exciting for me to see the results of WH as real world wings!

If you agree, when your wing is finished, I'd love to post the photos of your work on the Wing Helper facebook page. If that's OK with you, just drop me a message with the photos and I'll share them with the rest of the growing WH community.

Kind regards,

alex.

Very nice Alex!

About finished with a F3Res design with an elliptical panel. Found no bugs-easier than ever .

Best regards and thank you!

Mike

Thank you Mike! I'm looking forward to seeing your wing "in action"!

Any chance you will be adding the ability to configure retractable landing gear into the wing, along with mounting rails for the retracts, as well as calculating the pintle angle?

Steve

Hello Steve,

I'm afraid that at the time being, this not on the list. Could you please post a photo of how you would like such a mechanism/assembly to look like?

alex.

Take a look at the pics in this post.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...7#post11302873

Wow, that looks beautiful!

I think you can achieve much the same effect with a combination of a cuboid spar and a sheeting - up to a point. In the end, you will probably still need to do some minor modifications manually, but overall, it should be possible to do a lot of preparation work directly in the current version of the Wing Helper.

I'm afraid adding an automated support for positioning such an assembly would be a never ending story, because of the sheer number of possibilities and different wheel types / sizes and wing configurations

Hi Alex,

I'll send you some pictures when I've completed the covering. The plane Is just a quick bash of parts to make something to practice 3D flying with, but it is different than the other stuff on your Facebook site.

One more thing I don't see in WingHelper is diagonal ribs to help stiffen a wing. I've built two different types as shown in the pictures. Something that is the width of the rib at the spar that then attaches diagonally between ribs. Is there another term for these? It ends up being similar to 1/2 ribs... Typically they sit below the covering.

Steve

Hello,

you are right, diagonal ribs (or geodetic ribs) are not supported yet. So far, the demand for them was very low - if the demand rises, I'll take a look at them.

Considering your plane - don't worry, your wing is constructed with Wing Helper, therefore it qualifies for the FB page. ;-) Besides, it would be the first "non-glider" there.


Best regards,

alex.

Well, She's ready to fly, but the wind will not cooperate today. Hopefully next weekend.




There are more photos available via Flickr. Alex, please feel free to use any of these that you would like.
https://flic.kr/s/aHskQeuqSL

Weight is now 20 oz (570 gm) ready to fly. About an ounce lighter than the original foam wings.

Steve

Great photos and very nice clean job! Uploading to FB later this evening, thanks for sharing!

Best regards, Alex.

Edit: here it is!

Hi Alex,

I've just started working with the demo version of Wing Helper 1.3.0 and have to say that I like what I've seen so far. I'm a pretty competent draftsman so drawing up building plans isn't much of a problem for me EXCEPT for when it comes to fuselages. Those curves are my downfall!!! Any idea when that particular extension will be included into an update?

Regards,

Jeff

Hello Jeff,

I'm happy to hear that you liked your first steps with Wing Helper!

Considering fuselage, this functionality is foreseen for the version 2.0 - there are still a lot wishes for the wing design on the backlog, I'd like to finish them first before I commit to 2.0.

I expect to start gathering requirements for the fuselage design later this year, with the first version of WH also including support for fuselages late 2018 or early 2019, so I'm afraid it's still quite far away. The fuselages are much more complex than wings for the simple reason that there are so many different ways to build a fuselage. It will need some careful planning and software design to make sure the necessary flexibility is there without making it too hard to maintain and to extend the code.

Best regards,

alex.