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   RcCad and Education

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By
Drex Hathaway
Airplane Design Teacher
School District 215

In order for me to get a good clear picture of how RcCad helped my students in my class room, I needed to set up a simple experiment. I had a group of students design and build their planes the same way that I have had them do for 7 years. This was my control in this experiment.

 

I then, for a variable, had a group of kids design and build their planes using RcCad. The group of students that I used as my control designed their planes on paper using T-squares protractors and rulers. Each student had to draw their side and top views, wings, appendages, and bulk heads using standard drafting tools. This is tough for kids that have never used the tools before. Mvc-001s.jpg (14477 bytes)

 

Mvc-009s.jpg (14692 bytes) The hardest part for the students in this group was designing the bulk heads for their fuselages. It is hard for the students to picture what shape the bulk head must be created in order to give their fuselages the final shape that they want. This process took 20 school days to get this accomplished. The group using RcCad went much different. I had the students either find existing scale three view drawings to work from or create their own. This only took 2 school days to accomplish. Then the students of this group where scheduled to work on the computer.

 

Each student took one day on the computer. In this time they were able to put the measurements into RcCad from the side view and top view, create the wings and appendages they wanted on their planes and see the results immediately rendered in 3D. This allowed the student to see what was going to look like and helped them decide if there needed to be any changes made. I also found that being able to see what their finished product was going to look like made it easier for the students to stay motivated, and gave them direction in their efforts. Mvc-010s.jpg (15673 bytes)

 

Mvc-002s.jpg (18263 bytes) The greatest thing that RcCad did for the students is that after only about 1hr. of use, they were able to produce the full sized plans for the plane along with the bulk heads. RcCad saved these students more that 15 hours of work and produced a higher quality of plans to build from. This gave them much more time to do quality construction work. These students still had to add notches in the bulk heads for the stringers and keels. On the plans they had to add the structural members for wings, landing gear, and horizontal and vertical stabilizers.


The true results came when we go to see the final products of both groups. The planes designed by the first group looked like "first time" planes, with mostly square bodies that only flew so . The planes from the RcCad group built much more complex planes with rounded bodies and different shaped wings. These planes flew long and far. They also flew multiple flights.